Is Zmitser Dashkevich on Verge of Hunger Strike? :: Charter'97 :: News

The regime continues bringing pressure on the convicted leader of the Young Front organization Zmitser Dashkevich. As he had written in a letter to his parents, he was transferred for harder works. As written by him, the reason for that was that KGB officers had read on internet that he was helped by other prisoners, and that sewing bags was too easy. Later KGB officers ordered the administration of the colony to transfer the young man to a different party and give the hardest work for him, he wrote in his letter.

“Those prisoners who helped me were punished. And I was sent to roll logs. And prisoners, who had been noticed to communicate with me, were placed to an isolation ward. I started to show teeth too, and I wrote a number of appeals against the administration. But they can simply throw them off. That is why I really need a lawyer to give him all materials. I have decided to postpone a hunger strike. In case there won’t be any reaction from the administration, nothing would stop me… Over the last week 2 more statements of violations have been drawn up against me. I will be deprived of my last rights soon, and placed to isolation ward. But it doesn’t matter. It would be more peaceful there,” Dashkevich wrote in his letter to parents. He states that he has a status of a malicious violator of discipline and cannot hope for early conditional release.

As the young man wrote, he works from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. six days a week. It deprives him of the opportunity to study, and even answer letters. However, under the Labour Code the length of the working week is 40 hours, not 60 hours as in this case.

Besides, it has turned out that the administration banned a tree-day meeting in April which is granted for prisoners by the law, and for which his parents had been expecting. The deputy head of the colony told to Dashkevich’s father that only a short meeting in the end of May would be granted, and a long-term would take place in the end of July.

Dashkevich’s father has addressed the OSCE Minsk office in connection with the negative developments of the situation around his son. Recently the OSCE office head in Minsk Ake Peterson met Zmitser Dashkevich in the colony. It is possible that not coincidentally the pressure on the young man increased after the visit of the diplomat. The regime works on the principle: to demonstrate that everything is alright, and then to increase pressure.