Germany Support Belarusian Political Prisoners :: Charter'97 :: News

Today German Ambassador to Belarus Martin Hacker has visited a political prisoner, the leader of the Belarusian Social Democratic party (Narodnaya Hramada), a coordinator of the European Coalition Mikola Statkevich. The politician is serving a sentence of a so-called corrective labour in a settlement of Blon, Pukhavichy district, Minsk region. The leader of Social Democrats has been sentenced for staging peaceful protest actions against rigged referendum results in 2004 which allowed Alyaksandr Lukashenka to run for the third term in office.

As Mikola Statkevich told to the Charter’97 press-center, during the meeting the German diplomat told about Germany’s concern over political prisoners in Belarus. “Mr. Hecker assure me that Germany is to follow the situation of Belarusian political prisoners closely and to demand their release persistently,” the leader of Social Democrats said.

In his turn, Mikola Statkevich has called upon German Ambassador to pay more attention to political prisoners who are kept in colonies in Belarus now. They are a former candidate for presidency of Belarus, Alyaksandr Kazulin, who is serving a sentence in Vitsebsk corrective labour colony, a human rights activist Katsyaryna Sadouskaya, sent to Homel women colony, and the leader of the Young Front Zmitser Dashkevich, who is imprisoned in Shklou colony.

“There people are in the most difficult situation. They are completely isolated from the society; we hardly know anything about their health, about conditions of detention. We should monitor the cases of these people constantly and fight for their release,” Mikola Statkevich said to the Charter’97 press-center.