Mikalai Statkevich managed to deliver a message from prison.
‘Congratulations on the wonderful festival of Christmas! May it bring joy and bolster your hope for the best. I wish you true Christmas miracles’, his wife Maryna Adamovich quotes the political prisoner.
On January, 7 Mr Statkevich phoned his relatives, statkevich.org reports. ‘This call from prison is a true present, a small Christmas gift,’ the wife says.
For seeing a New Year in Mikalai Statkevich and his cellmate even cooked a celebratory dinner (a fish salad made from ‘the choice pieces of kilka boiled with entrails that is usually served in prison for dinner’, and a scratch cookies cake. Even a fir tree branch was given to them; so, they were ready for the celebration, Maryna Adamovich adds.
Mikalai Statkevich asked her to send his congratulations to friends, associates and those who support him, all the good people, and also to thank those who congratulated him and other political prisoners for the support which always warms and helps.
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Mikalai Statkevich is the last 2010 presidential candidate to be in prison. The sentence given to Mr Statkevich in 2011 was one of the toughest: six years of imprisonment in a maximum security penal colony. The reason might be explained by the fact that in his election speech Mikalai Statkevich addressed to the current president demanding “to give back all that you have stolen”.
The authorities are trying to embitter Statkevich’s life even in prison putting him to a disciplinary cell or making him share a ward with an AIDS sufferer. However, the former presidential candidate keeps mantaining his innocence and refuses to ask President Lukashenka for pardon.
