Anastasia Loika: Sentence to Dziadok connected with EU-Lukashenka talks

The Belarusian authorities do not only have an intention to release political prisoners but also worsen confinement conditions and increase prison term for them.

Anastasia Loika, Viasna's human rights defender, says that that despite the talks with EU officials, Mikalai Dziadok was left in prison for one more year, because the state media earlier described him as the most “dangerous” anarchist of Belarus. The increased number of detentions and arrests of anarchists can be explained by the upcoming “elections”.

– What do you think about the additional prison term for Mikalai Dziadok?

– Of course we said at the very beginning that the c ourt decisionwas illegal. We think the charges against Mikalai Dziadok were not grounded, so he was recognised as a political prisoner. An absurd offence of wearing wrong trousers cannot be a serious crime to prolong his prison term for a year.

– EU officials visit the country during such trials...

– The punishment for no reasons is clearly linked to the negotiation process between EU representatives and Belarus. The Belarusian authorities do not only have an intention to release political prisoners, but worsen confinement conditions and increase prison terms for them. We already saw something like that with Zmitser Dashkevich.

The question of political prisoners is raised at meetings with Council of Europe's officials. These questions are raised at other high-level international meetings. They probably have some arrangements concerning the release, but we see that the situation is not improved and they are not freed. On the contrary, the situation is getting worse.

The matter is that the Belarusian authorities have a “reserve” of political prisoners for trade. On the other hand, the Main Organised Crime Department had many questions to Mikalai. They considered him to be almost an organiser of the entire anarchist movement in Belarus and said he was involved in all mythical anarchist organisations. He was given much attention by the state-run media. Perhaps, he became for them a symbol of the Belarusian anarchist movement who must be oppressed and harassed. The recently increased number of arrests of anarchist activists shows that a brutal crackdown on all anarchists has started.

Political prisoner Mikalai Dziadok was tried on February 26. The activist was sentenced to one more year of imprisonment.

Human rights defenders note that harassment of opposition members, journalist and small businessmen has increased in the last months. New political prisoners have appeared, the number of preventive arrests of activists has grown, a number of new repressive laws have been adopted, independent websites have been blocked, pressure on small business has increased. Experts explain it with the fact that many EU officials close their eyes to human rights violations in Belarus and try to establish a “dialogue” with the dictator.