Alyaksandr Kazulin: 500 nights behind the bars :: Charter'97 :: News

7 August was the 5 hundredth day of imprisonment of the former presidential candidate of the Republic of Belarus Alyaksandr Kazulin.

Kazulin was thrown to prison for organizing the protest action against falsification of the presidential election results on the Day of Freedom 25 March 2006. 13 July the Minsk city court sentenced the policymaker to 5.5 years in prison. There Alyaksandr Kazulin went on a hunger strike demanding consideration of the Belarusian issue by the UNO Security Council. The political prisoner’s hunger strike lasted for 53 days. He lost over 40 kg of weight and got irrevocable health consequences. The courageous policymaker attained his objective- the US representative raised the Belarusian issue at the UNO Security Council.

Today’s state of health of Alyaksandr Kazulin is commented on by the political prisoner’s daughter Yulia Kazulina who met with her farther in the jail recently . The comments were extended by his party collaborators Syargei Skrabets and Igar Rynkevich.

Yulia Kazulina: In his letter after our meeting the father writes: ” After the meeting it is as if you returned to the other world, as if you lived in different dimensions. You open the door, you step over the threshold- and everything is different”.

Father looked calm and confident though the pressure on him is increasing, he is informatively pressed. He receives not all the letters , even those which we are sending, I mean the letters about family affairs and health –but even these letters do not reach him. Now Mother started numbering the letters and sending them by express mail.

The prisoners are prevented from communicating with him.

He was given three unreasonable warnings. For the last warning he was deprived of a short-term meeting. All in all, there are only three such meetings a year… Thus the following meeting may be only in November…

We asked him about his state of health. There are the same problems- pains in the back and the leg. Those are the consequences of beatings during two arrests. The father’s back was his weak point and now it is still worse.

Syargei Skrabets: Today we are declaring louder and louder “The former presidential candidate professor Kazulin is suffering in the jail!” Social democrats of Belarus (BSDP (G) and BSDG) declared their joint action in support of the political prisoner Alyaksandr Kazulin. This action is presumed to cover the whole country. The applications for solidarity pickets have been forwarded in Minsk, Lida and Baranavichy. Similar applications are being prepared in many towns and villages.
Igar Rinkevich: For many Belarusians those 500days mean the period of the dramatic event continuation. Alyaksandr Kazulin was thrown to jail in compliance with the judgment of the submissive to the authority’s court for his being in the vanguard of the democratic changes, of the struggle for truth and justice. If he were not in prison the leader of the Belarusian social democrats by the analogy with the well-known 500 days of Yavlinsky would also do everything for the radical improvement of his people’s well-being, for Belarus to become free.

Alyaksandr Kazulin is under the total control, under the siege which can be compared to the”Leningrad blockade”. But even in prison he has not become another victim of the political repressions. He is not simply referred to as the political prisoner N1 but is called the hero of our time because even behind the barbed wire he continues the courageous struggle and he will win.
500 days is incredibly much. But Alyaksandr Kazulin with his strong will and spirit will pull his health and strength together for gaining his ahead- of- schedule release.