Mikalai Statkevich: I heard shouts in Belarusian in prison

A former political candidate worries about political prisoners in the Mahilou jail.

He said it to his wife Maryna Adamovich in a telephone conversation. Mikalai Statkevich said he had heard someone shouting in Belarusian, Radio Svaboda reports.

“He said he heard that someone was shouting and beating the bars with a metal cup in the closed unit on the nights on July 6-7 and July 7-8. He screamed in perfect Belarusian that he was sick and tired, he didn't want to remain in the cell, but wouldn't apply for a pardon,” Maryna Adamovich quoted the political prisoner.

Besides Mikalai Statkevich, political prisoners Mikalai Dziadok and Yauhen Vaskovich are kept in the closed prison in Mahilou. The prison authorities pressed on the activists demanding them to apply to Lukashenka for a pardon, but they refused to do so.

“My son was thrown into a punishment cell for 10 days. He sent a letter recently saying he had no news,” Mikalai Dziadok's father Aliaksandr Dziadok says.

Rushania Vaskovich, the mother of Yauhen Vaskovich, received a letter from her son yesterday. “He writes he is okay,” she says.

Mikalai Statkevich was a candidate in the 2010 presidential election. He was detained after mass protests against the rigged election results. More than 700 protesters, including presidential candidates Andrei Sannikov, Uladzimir Niakliaeu, Ales Mikhalevich and members of their teams, were detained after the rally.

On May 26, 2011, the politician was sentenced to 6 years in a medium security correctional colony by Minsk's Partyzanski district court.

On January 12, 2012, confinement conditions for him were strengthened. He was transferred from penal colony No. 17 in Shklou to prison No. 4 in Mahilou.

Statkevich is often thrown into a punishment cell. He has restrictions relating to parcels and visits of relatives. He often faces provocations on the order of the authorities.