‘Our son is half dead, he needs help’ - father of man arrested over 2010 post-election protests

Uladzimir Kondrus

The parents of Uladzimir Kondrus arrested for alleged involvement in the 2010 post-election protests have visited their son in jail.

The 39-year-old man is in a critical condition, his father told human rights center Viasna.

“We are in shock. Our son is more dead than alive. They carried him on a stretcher to the meeting room. A five-minute conversation was enough for him. He is exhausted. His talk is incoherent. When you look at him it seems as if he was in a fog, he hardly understands something. His eyes are half-empty,” Uladzimir Kondrus Senior said.

As reported earlier, the arrestee declared a hunger strike to protest the detention. For this reason, his health deteriorated, and he was transferred to the jail’s medical unit. But in spite of his firm stance, the son asked the parents for help.

“The son wanted us to insist on stomach pumping. He suffers from a stomach ulcer, for this reason he did not serve in the army. Now he is spitting blood. Obviously, the illness has become active. Prison doctors provide no aid. He asked for some painkiller – they refused to give him anything. It is terrible to even talk about it. Today my wife tearfully begged [prison authorities] to transferred him to a normal hospital. Our son needs urgent help,” the father stressed.

Uladzimir Kondrus, born in 1977, was placed under arrest on June 14 as a suspect of participating in mass riots (Arlicle 293 of the Criminal Code) near the Government House in Minsk after the presidential elections in 2010. In 2011, a lot of people were sentenced to prison terms under this article. For the time of a preliminary investigation being carried out, Kondrus will be kept in predetention centre No 1 in Minsk.

belsat.eu, following spring96.org