Six-month post-prison supervision over former political prisoner Aliaksandr Malchanau was established at the end of July. He is banned from leaving his native town without probation officers’ sanction. Mr Malchanau also must stay at home after 22:00 and turn up to police twice a month.
In an interview with Belsat TV Aliaksandr Malchanau expressed hope that the decision would be lifted. According to him, there is no reason to his being supervised because he was not a fragrant violator of penitentiary regime and the prison vocational school administration vouched for him. There he learned a trade of a machine operator.
After the release Aliaksandr was offered a good job in a private company. But due to the regime of supervision he would fail to go on business trips… The former political prisoner hopes to come back to Minsk to earn his living. He also wants to continue his studies at the International Humanities and Economy Institute. He was expelled when serving his term.
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Sentenced to three years of imprisonment for participation in actions that seriously disrupt civil order on the day of the 2010 presidential elections and later pardoned, the 23-year-old oppositionist had to return to prison again: he was convicted for stealing scrap metal from an abandoned factory.
After his arrest in December, 2010 the oppositionist lost his job and was excluded from the institute. According to his relatives, Aliaksandr stood no chance of being employed: he was repeatedly turned down while looking for a job.
To make both ends meet and help ill parents Malchanau started collecting scrap metal. On April 10, 2012 he stood trial charged with stealing scrap amounting to $9 from the abandoned factory. The oppositionist was sentenced to 1.5 years of imprisonment in a medium-security penal colony. Aliaksandr Malchanau stressed that policemen had been writing off this industrial facility before his arrest. In his opinion,it is the way that the Belarusian security forces have revenged on him.
The administration of the detention center in Zhodzina did not allow Mr Malchanau to attend the funeral of his mother, who died in June 2012.
Belsat
