Growing pressure on political prisoners

Mikalay Statkievich got a reprimand, Eduard Lobau’s mail is ”filtered”, Aliaksandar Frantskievich wasn’t allowed a meeting with his parents.

Natallia Pinchuk, wife of political prisoner Ales Bialiatski, returned from a meeting with Ales in the Babruisk prison, Radio Svaboda reports.

It should have been a long meeting, but it was shortened from three to one day, Natallia says.

”They’ve found a vague reason to shorten the meeting. But I am happy that there was a meeting after all, and that I’d got to see him. Well, he is energetic, doing fine, saying that everything is going to be all right, but I heard him coughing all the time. He says that work takes most of the time – he works with packing of sewing goods. I know for sure that he hasn’t submitted any appeals. Of course, he is watched, which results in limited contacts with other convicts.”

Former presidential candidate Mikalay Statkievich sent his wife Maryna Adamovich a letter where he writes about being pressed by the administration of the Shklou jail:

”Yesterday I received a letter proving what he had written before, that the administration is searching for faults. And on the first day of the search, he got a reprimand, and it won’t be his last, as he says basing on his previous experience. After a reprimand, there’ll be no chance to re-consider the case on the confinement conditions that could have been held on 12 July. And this is just a minor thing compared to what can happen.”

Maryna Lobava, mother of Young Front member Eduard Lobau, says that she has no certain information about her son’s confinement conditions in the Ivatsevichy prison because the entire correspondence is scrutinized.

”They listen to our telephone conversations and read letters, so when he writes something improtant, it doesn’t reach me. So he just writes that he’s doing fine. At least he hasn’t had problems with appeal for pardon. Today I’ll send him blocks of paper, envelopes and post-stamps. He receives lots of letters and answers them.”

Together with Eduard Lobau, Aliaksandar Frantskevich, charged on the anarchists’ case, is also kept in the Ivatsevichy prison. His mother Tatsiana Frantskevich says that her son wasn’t allowed a meeting with his parents:

”On May 4 we should have had a long meeting, it was his birthday. But right before the meeting the prison chief didn’t like something about Aliaksandar.

He was walking wrong, saying wrong, -so he lost the right to the meeting because of severe breaches. He didn’t even got the money transfer. They told him that they will watch him and change the punishment, but I doubt it. For example, this weekend it was supposed to be an open day in the prison, but the prison administration crossed his name on the list of participants and told him that they won’t invite his parents. I think this is some kind of pressure, but I don’t know why. Maybe they are trying to break him, to make him write something. Sasha told me that he had received a letter written with a left hand, saying that he should confess.”

According to Tatsiana Frantskievich, parents of the anarchists convicted on the case keep in touch and share information about their sons. For one year ago, in May 2011, Aliaksandar Frantskievich, Mikalay Dziadok, Igar Alinievich, Yaugeniy Vaskovich, Artsiom Prakapenka and Paval Sytamalotau were sentenced to 4.5-8 years of imprisonment.