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Yauhen Vaskovich: More zeroes appeared in prices and people became angrier

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Yauhen Vaskovich: More zeroes appeared in prices and people became angrier

The former political prisoner noticed how prices grew during his prison term.

Yauhen Vaskovich, who was released on Saturday, returned to his native town of Babruisk. He is getting used to changes in the town and new gadgets. Relatives, friends, former classmates and journalists want to surprise him every day, Radio Svaboda reports.

“I go to bed late and wake up early. I am on the move all day and I get tired, but it's fine,” Yauhen Vaskovich says.

He must register at a police station for supervision. Main rules of supervision were explained to him.

“Supervision rules are not very hard,” the former political prisoner says. “I can leave the town and even the country, but I must warn if I plan to leave home for more than a month. They will check on me from time to time. Supervision is established for five years, but it can be reduced to 2.5 years.

Some shops that I used to visit closed, and new stores appeared. I notice that the number of zeroes in prices grew, and people became angrier and more aggressive.”

Vaskovich's most pleasant memories of prison is piles of letters. Cellmates even said they envied him.

“They joked they needed to get rid of you because it's terrible that I received so many letters and they didn't,” he said.

Yauhen Vaskovich is not going to give up social and political activity. He thinks none of former political prisoners will do it. He says he made conclusions and won't repeat mistakes.

“Our campaign wasn't useful. It only led to prison terms and made people worry about us. We weren't the force able to change something. The regime has its force for every force,” he said.

Whatever the reason for the release is – pre-election games or a desire to get new loans – Yauhen thinks it is good that people were freed. However, he is not going to thank the “liebrator”:

“It's obviously was a game. We were released for some profit. It's like thanking a football player of the rival team for scoring an own goal.”

Yaughen Vaskovich was tried together with Artsiom Prakapenka and Pavel Syramolatau. He was sentenced to 7 years of imprisonment for an attempt to set the doors of the KGB office in Babruisk on fire. The political prisoner was often thrown into a punishment cell. He was later transferred from a correctional facility to a stricter prison in Mahilou as a “persistent violator of prison rules”.

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