Kavalenka taken to psychiatric hospital

On March 26, hunger striker Syarhei Kavalenka was transferred to a prison psychiatric hospital in the Vitsebsk-based penitentiary “Vitsba-3”.

The mother of the hunger striker, Lidziya Kavalenka, and deputy head of the CCP-BPF party Yury Belenki learned this from the administration of a remand prison in Valadarski street, Radio Svaboda reports.

“We were told they had no other option to make him stop the hunger strike. So they took him to the mental hospital to start force-feeding on the basis of a particular diagnosis. Police refused to take him to a hospital for civilians, though we insisted on that variant,” Yury Belenki said.

Syarhei Kavelenka has been on hunger strike since the middle of December 2010 with a short break. The activists wants a sentence of 2 years and 1 month in prison for violation of probation to be overturned. He was given a suspended sentence earlier for hanging out a national white-red-white flag on a Christmas Tree in Vitsebsk.