Zmitser Dashkevich receives rape threats from prison warden

The Young Front reports allerting news concerning further repressions against Zmitser Dashkevich.

The Young Front leader Zmitser Dashkevich has been on a hunger strike for a week now in a punishment cell of the Mozyr penal colony.

The reason for the hunger strike became known today. It is a cruel treatment from Mozyr penal colony administration, including prison warden Yury Zbarouski.

The Young Front press service reports the prison warden insulted Dashkevich using obscene words. Zbarouski threatened the Young Front leader that he would spend his whole prison term in a punishment cell.

The political prisoner has been moved to the Mozyr penal colony a week ago, but prison authorities already had several meetings concerning his case, they deprived him of all visits and gave him a reprimand.

According to Young Front, a prison officer found a blade on the table in the barrack for 40 prisoners. Dashkevich was moved to the barrack only recently and it wasn’t his blade, but the colony administration threatens to label him as an inmate inclined to commit suicide.

Zmitser Dashkevich filed an application announcing his hunger strike. The chief of the disciplinary department crumpled it and threw away threatening the Young Front leader would be moved to the criminal offenders’ cell and will by raped by other inmates.

After these incidents, Zmitser refused to fulfill any orders. He again appeared before the prison board and got another term in the punishment cell. The Young Front leader doesn’t plan to terminate his hunger strike until the prison staff changes the attitude towards him.

“Zmitser Dashkevich has been in this penal colony for only a week. I cannot even imagine what will happen next… The disciplinary department head said to me that Zmitser would face even tougher conditions if any information appeared in the media. But I don’t see other variants except for voicing out these awful things,” Anastasia Palazhanka, the fiancee of the political prisoner, says.

 

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Other political prisoners

  • Uladzimir Niklajeu
  • Fiodar Mirzajanau
  • Andrzej Poczobut
  • Vital Matsukevich
  • Valery Sedov