Valeria Khotsina: Trial against Mikalai Dziadok was a show

The family was not sad though all knew how would the trial end.

Charter97.org learnt it from Valeria Khotsina, the wife of political prisoner Mikalai Dziadok who was sentenced to an additional year in prison. She says it was easy to predict the outcome. The trial was a show without any attempts to achieve justice.

– It didn't come as a surprise to me. Both Mikalai and his parents expected it. It was a precedent with Zmitser Dashkevich. In our case, it was even more predictable.

– How was the trial held?

– They made a show of it. It was very liberal: both relatives and other inmates were allowed to attend the trial. The judge granted all possible motions. We were allowed to look at the punishment cell. The prison chief allowed everything that is usually not allowed. It even confused us. It was so unusual.

The outcome was as we expected. Perhaps, some had a hope that the verdict would be fair if everything looked so good and liberal. But no miracle happened. Practice shows that it doesn't matter how the trial is held, what arguments are presented and what violations took place. A year is a year...

– Judging by this decision, they failed to broke down Mikalai.

– I think so. He repeated during the trial that he had been under constant pressure from the prison administration. He understands it is not their initiative but an order from their chief who receive orders from their chiefs.

– What do you feel? Was it hard to survive that day?

– It was hard and painful, but we expected it and it help us to accept the outcome. Mikalai didn't look sad. He wasn't upset, he wasn't broken down. The prosecutor was shocked when she saw Mikalai and his lawyer, as well as me and his father, talking and laughing during a break. She didn't see hysterics she expected to see. She was just sitting and shaking her head, perhaps thinking that she should have asked three years for him if it was possible because we didn't “take a hint”.

Mikalai Dziadok was to be released on March 3, 2015. He was tried on February 26 and 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.