Several journalists have been released in Belarus the last days after 8-12 days´ imprisonment. The editor of Nasha Niva, Andrej Dynko has published a diary from his detention in Akrestsina prison. -The worst tricks of Soviet times are back, and the repressive machine has grown much larger. In 1996, the courts fined people for scuffling with police. In 2006, they convict young women to 7 days on a plank bed without mattresses for a bottle with tea, Dynko writes. (4-APR-06)
Dynko´s full prison diary has been translated from Belarusian by www.eurozine.com. To read his diary, click here.
On 3 April BAJ member Anton Taras was released from the confinement cell in Akrestsina Street after 11-days´ detention. Several journalists have been released from the confinement cell in Zhodzina: BAJ member Tattiana Vanina (8 days of detention) was released on March 31, Vadzim Kaznachejeu and Darya Kastsenka (10 days of detention) was released on the night of April 3. Valery Shchukin´s (a journalist from “Narodnaja Vola”) trial assigned for March 31 was postponed again and assigned for April 6.
Foreign journalists still in prison
However, there are still a lot of journalists who have not been released yet. According to BAJ the Belarusian journalists Artsiom Liava and Syarhey Salash, the Russian journalists – Eduard Glezin, Oleg Kozlovskij and Aleksandr Podrabinek, Ukrainian Journalists Andrej Lubka and Pavel Salyga, a Georgian cameraman Georgij Lagidze, a Polish reporter Veronika Smalinska, and a Canadian journalist Frederic Levoie are still in the confinement cell in Akrestsina Street.
Editor´s diary
“We sit in a new prison building, not yet completed, but already full of those arrested in the square and around it. There are 8 of us in a cell designed for 5, and, by using a method of proportion, we try to estimate the number of internees. We have no idea how many cells there are in the old prison building. There are about 40 in the new one. How many of us are there? In the dinner list we put our numbers as 327, 329… Five hundred? Six hundred? Belarusian state radio, the only means of information we have, doesn´t tell us anything about the numbers of the arrested – a clear sign that the number is huge!” In his diary Sacrificial therapy; Letter from a prison in Minsk the editor of Nasha Niva, Andrej Dynko, tells about the overcrowded prisons.
-Be ready for everything, but don´t give in
“Two of the prison buildings are completely packed. Enzymes are fermenting in the cells. Obedient citizens get used to prison. There is no depression. We know about the newly arrested and about the widespread protest on Freedom Day (25 March). The prison greets with rumbling applause the people who are chanting “Long live Belarus!” and “Hanba!” [“Shame!”] near the Akrestsina prison gate. My inmates discuss the best ways to suggest the idea of a solidarity movement to their colleagues at work – for example, the people outside could begin to have 2 meals a day, as prisoners do, until everyone is released. The guys read in Valer Bulhakau´s column in Nasha Niva: “Be ready for everything, but don´t give in”.
