Ales Pushkin protests by silence and hunger strike

The artist, who was arrested for 13 days on December 9, in protest refuses to speak: he had not said a word during the trial, and continued his silent protest in the ward of preliminary detention.

Ales Pushkin was visited by his friend from Krupki Andrei Alyakhnovich. He also visited the police department of Krupki district, where in a special cell the detainees serve their sentence. Alyakhnovich tried to pass a parcel with biscuits, sweets, tea and coffee, however Pushkin refused to receive the parcel, Radio Svaboda informs.

As said by Alyakhnovich, the artist is in a solitary cell for one prisoner, he is lying on the plank bed with his face to the wall, and does not react to any words. Since the day before yesterday he refuses to eat, Alyakhnovich says that it looks as if Pushkin had gone on hunger strike in protest, but he does not say that.

He is to stay in custody by the decision of Krupki district court till December 21. Artist’s wife Yanina Pushkina is convinced that her husband had been arrested preventively, for him not to organize a protest on December 19.

The grounds for arrest was a statement of a dweller of their village, Lazarevich, who informed police that the artist had beaten him. Yanina Pushkina says that there was no fight. Ales simply evicted the drunken fellow villager from his yard, when the latter tried to attack the owner of the house. The incident took place on December 8 in the morning, and at about 3.45 p.m. Ales Pushkin was taken by police from his house in Bobr Krupki district. On December 9 Krupki district court convicted Pushkin of malicious hooliganism.

During the previous election campaign the artist was also in custody: in the same way he was on trial for hooliganism and detained for 15 days.