From punishment cell to prison hospital

Policial prisoner Siargey Kavalenka’s health condition is not disclosed.

Siargey Kavalenka, an activist of the Conservative-Christian Party (Belarusian People’s Front) from Vitsiebsk, is serving his sentence in the Mahiliou reformatory 19. As BelaPAN found out from Kavalenka’s wife Alena Kavalenka, after spending 16 days in a punishment isolation cell, he was transferred to the reformatory hospital.

According to Alena Kavalenka, Siargey was transferred to the isolation cell in the end of July, right after his meeting with the family. “At first he was assigned 9 days in the isolation cell, and while he was there, they added 7 more days to the punishment. He was supposed to leave the isolation cell on 14 August. But yesterday I found out that he had been transferred to the hospital,” Alena Kavalenka said.

She doesn’t know why Siargey is in the reformatory hospital. “For some reason, he is kept alone in an isolated hospital ward. They allowed me to pass him some medicines for liver, kidneys, stomach and pancreas. I don’t know exactly what he has, but his condition must have deteriorated after the isolation cell,” the convict’s wife said.

Siargey Kavalenka was detained on 19 December 2011; charges were pressed against him (according to article 415 of the Criminal Code) for avoiding the prison sentence he had been convicted to serve in March 2010 for having hang out a white-red-white flag on Vitsiebks’s main Christmas tree. This February Kavalenka was sentenced to two years and one month of prison conviction to be served in a reformatory. Right after the detention, Siargey went on a hunger strike that lasted for about two months with minor breaks. On 18 May the Vitsiebsk regional court declined Kavalenka’s appeal against the sentence.