Human rights activists: one should not wait for the release of the political prisoners

Political prisoners do not fall under the law about amnesty, signed by Lukashenko.

According to the vice-chairman of the Human Rights Center “Viasna”, Valentin Stefanovich, the amnesty does not cover the articles of the Criminal Code, according to which the political prisoners were condemned. These are, in particular, the articles about serious violations of the public order, riots, and slander against the president, informs ”Radio Svaboda”.

“We can conclude from this that the amnesty will not cover those, condemned for the Square. Besides, there is a legal provision, stating that the amnesty is not distributed to the violators of the regime. And, as we know, all the political prisoners have the status of the violators of the regime, including our colleague, Ales Belyatsky. He wrote recently that almost every third of the party was freed under amnesty; many of them received the right for conditional early release, because the imprisonment year is cancelled. But not him. That is why I’m afraid that we won’t see the release of the political prisoners under the amnesty. This is an artificial politicization, this isn’t done accidentally but not to free political prisoners”, - noted Valentin Stefanovich.

According to Oleg Gulak, the Chairman of the BHC, “despite the fact that there were talking in the high tribunes that this law should not be politicized, there was a clear politicization”.

“There are such approaches now which were absent in the last amnesty. Despite the fact that more serious articles fall under the amnesty, political articles of the Criminal Code are deliberately excluded. This is an absolute evidence of the political approach to the act of amnesty”, - he said.

According to Gulak’s words, the society didn’t get any explanation about why such a discriminatory approach had been established.