Dzmitry Paliyenka Announces Hunger Strike

The activist has been holding a hunger strike in the detention facility since March 24.

Civil activist Viachaslau Kasinerau, who is a friend and colleague of Dzmitry Paliyenka, informed about this on his Facebook page:

“At the moment, Dzmitry Paliyenka has been on hunger strike in the detention facility since March 24.

Dzmitry's demands to the administration are as follows:

1) Medical aid, since Paliyenka’s dermatitis aggravated again. A doctor came to Dzmitry only once, medical assistance to the political prisoner is not provided.

2) A pen (which was seized from him) in order to be able to write letters to friends and comrades. As well as complaints.

3) From the moment of his arrest, many people wrote to Dzmitry, but only one letter reached the addressee. He demands freedom of correspondence with everyone who writes to him and to whom Paliyenka himself is going to write.

As friends and comrades of Dzmitry Paliyenka, we declare that such treatment is actually a person’s torture, and we also consider another criminal case against the activist politically motivated.

All this is most likely a result of the provocation of the security forces, whose goal was the revenge and isolation of the activist in the framework of a “non-political” article. Such provocations and white-stitched cases have taken place in the past and none of the fighters against the dictatorship are protected from this. So, we have to protect Dzmitry, otherwise each of us could come next.”

Important to note, on March 20 in Minsk, activist and former political prisoner Dzmitry Paliyenka was brutally detained in his apartment. The detention was conducted by a group of people in body armor and with machine guns. The activist is suspected of having committed a crime under Part 3 of Article 339 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Belarus (“Extremely malicious hooliganism”).