Vyachaslau Siuchyk: Silivonchyk, who was arrested in Russia, should be transferred to Belarus

A rally of solidarity with a Belarusian Kiryl Silivonchyk is to be held in Warsaw on May 24.

It is to be held near the Embassy of the Russian Federation. Organisers of the event are Razam movement and Euromaidan Warsaw. The rally is to start at 2 p.m.

Charter97.org website has been told about that by the leader of Razam movement Vyachaslau Siuchyk.

“There should react to the case of Kiryl Silivonchyk (Kirill Silivonchik), we should demand his release,” the politician stated. “Violations of rights in today’s Russia are boundless. Up to the present day there is no information about the reason for Kiryl Silivoncyk’s arrest. The only thing we know is that he had been charged for a report of a message by another person in a social network. He was arrested in winter, on January 18, and no one knew about that. Kiryl Silivonchyk stayed without an independent lawyer and contacts with people for a long time. As a result, during the trial he agreed to the charges voiced by investigators. It is known that he had been threatened by a more serious term, up to 7 years. That is why Kiryl Silivonchyk did not appeal from the judgment.

Even according to the words of the Kremlin’s propagandist Ekaterina Kibalchich, the Belarusian national was punished for the text, which could be hardly called a reason for a criminal prosecution legally”.

Vyachaslau Siuchyk does not exclude that other citizens of our country could have been placed to Russian prisons for solidarity with Ukraine.

“We know what is happening in Russia now,” he noted. “Only according to the information of the Foreign Affairs Ministry of Ukraine, 11 citizens of this country are kept in Russian prisons: like a filmmaker Oleg Sentsov, illegally seized in Crimea, or in Donbas – as a deputy of the Supreme Rada Nadiya Savchenko, and the UNA UNSO leader Nikolay Karpyuk. Human rights watchdogs say that there could be more than 30 such persons. We fear that beside Kiryl Silivonchyk, other citizens of Belarus could have found themselves in the same situation.

The rally on Sunday is to be held also in support of all those who are kept in Russian prisons for solidarity with Ukraine.”

The politician hopes that the authorities of Belarus would take steps to defend Kiryl Silivonchyk and transfer him to his native country.

“We offer the authorities of Belarus to take steps concerning Kiryl Silivonchyk,” Vyachaslau Siuchyk stated. “There were cases when citizens of our country, including opposition activists, were imprisoned in neighbouring states, and then they were transferred to Belarus and were released, for example, due to conditional early relief. Such a mechanism exists, and we have reminded the authorities about that. Kiryl Silivonchyk is not an opposition activist, he had not been engaged in political activities, and he could be included in such a mechanism. The other thing is that the terms of implementing such a mechanism are rather long. Nevertheless, it is possible that he could be lucky, and he could be transferred to Belarus to serve the term.”

We remind that the regional court of Moscow found a 22-year-old Homel dweller Kiryl Silivonchyk guilty of violation of the Article “Public justification of terrorism or public calls for it.” In his account in VKontakte social network the Belarusian placed a post with a call for solidarity with Ukraine and joint struggle against the Russian terroristic threat. He was sentenced to 2 years of a penal colony for that. Kiryl Silivonchyk is serving the sentence on the territory of Russia.