Ihar Alinevich: Three people stand behind my back when I'm writing

The prison authorities began to control what the political prisoner writes after the release of his book “Going to Magadan”.

Ihar Alinevich's mother asked her son during a visit to the correctional colony what he thought about the Frantsishak Aliakhnovich award.

The award for the best book written in prison founded by Radio Svaboda and the Belarusian PEN Centre, was given to Ihar Alinevich for his book “Going to Magadan”. The activist described his arrest in Moscow and detention in the KGB jail in Minsk. According to Valiantsina Alinevich, her son was “happy, but spoke in a temperate tone, as he always does”. He doesn't consider himself a writer. He wants as many people as possible to know about the things happening in the KGB jail.

“I asked him about his literary plans and he replied he couldn't fulfill them, because after the release of the book, three people stand behind his back and watch what he is writing every time he sits down to write something, even a letter,” Valiantsina Alinevich says.

Valiantsina Alinevich received a letter from him on January 24: “He writes he is okay, but doesn't go into details.”

Anarchist activist Ihar Alinevich was sentenced to 8 years in prison for violence against administrative buildings in Minsk. He didn't admit his guilt.

He serves his term in a correctional colony in Navapolatsk.

Anarchist activists were detained in September 2010 for participating in protests classified by a court as attacks on official buildings. The activists were charged of carrying out political actions, including an attack on the embassy of Russia in Minsk in August 2010, and given long prison sentences.

The book “Going to Magadan” based on the diary he kept in the KGB jail was published in early 2013.