There is no hope for amnesty for political prisoners

On July 10 Lukashenko signed the law on amnesty.

Radio “Svaboda” found out, if there was any hope for conditional early release for political prisoners and their families.

Pavel Sevyarynets who is forced to work in the village Kuplin of the Pruzhany District in order to serve his sentence shared his opinion:

“According to the information, that passed yesterday, one signed what was prepared by the ministry of Internal Affairs and stamped by both Chambers of “Parliament” with no changes. It means that no political prisoner, according to the criteria included in this amnesty (included deliberately, there were no such criteria in previous laws about amnesty), comes out. So there are no hopes, everything is clear, everything is understood.

Political prisoners’ violations are made artificially; there also are restrictions on the article 342. In 2005-2012 years amnesty could be applied to the convicted on this article. In other words, all these “traps” were made only for these fourteen people.

What concerns me, I don’t fit both of these criteria. Now, I suppose, the next part of the ballet will be around “the elections”. The trade will be about “the elections””.

Pavel Sevyarynets has to serve the sentence up to October 2013.

Mother of another political prisoner, Alexander Frantskevich, who was convicted on the case of so called anarchists, expressed her own opinion about the amnesty:

“There is no hope. At all. Lukashenko was saying from the very beginning that we should not add politics here. From 14 political prisoners almost all suddenly have become evil violators. They were not such before. Their convictions were fabricated. So there are no illusions here.

We will be waiting for the autumn. There could be a trade before the elections. As far as I understand, the political prisoners are a small coin for Lukashenko”.