UN to consider complaint about confinement conditions in Akrestin jail first time ever

The United Nations Human Rights Committee has registered a complaint filed by Belarusian activist Yahor Babrou.

It is the first complaint at inhuman and degrading treatment in the notorious Belarusian detention centre in Akrestin Street in Minsk.  

The activist complains about conditions in cells, which he regards as inhuman and degrading.

The activist wrote in the communication: “There were no beds, chairs and a table in cells. There was only a kind of a wooden platform, common for all inmates. I didn't receive a mattress, blanket, pillow and linen. I had to sleep on bare boards in my own overclothes with other dirty inmates with insects crawling on them. Sometimes the number of inmates sleeping together on the same platform reached 10 people.”

The activist says it was very cold in cells – from 10 to 14°C. There was a toilet in the cell, but it was not enclosed from the rest of the cell. An inmate had to relieve oneself before the eyes of his cellmates.

The above mentioned facts, Yahor Babrou thinks, denigrate human dignity under article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

In accordance with the procedure, the Human Rights Committee sent a copy of the complaint to the Belarusian government for comments. In a reply, the government denies the acceptability of the communication and says the claimer didn't use all national tools of defence, including filing a complaint to the Prosecutor General's Office of Belarus. Belarus notes it terminates all actions in relation to the communication and refuses to fulfill the recommendations made by the Human Rights Committee.