The issue of political prisoner Mikalai Statkevich may be solved in the near future, Belarusian president Alyaksandr Lukashenka said at today’s meeting with independent journalists.
“I will not play cat and mouse – the issue is on the agenda. And I am the only person who can solve it. But I do not know yet when it will happen. I have not considered the issue in such perspective. If we release him, he should be released before the election. <…> In the near future you will know about it.”
“He wants to be in prison and leave it as a hero. I give him such opportunity, and you ask me to free him. What am I supposed to do? I can release, if a person files a petition [for pardon] to me, but he fails to ask, because he wants to be a hero.”
Mikalai Statkevich is the last 2010 presidential candidate whom the Belarusian regime is still keeping 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 Belarus president Lukashenka for pardon.
In January, 2012 Statkevich was transferred from Shklou penal colony No 17 to a closed prison, where conditions of confinement are much more severe. In January, 2015 the imprisoned politician was moved from Mahiliou prison No 4 back to Shklou penal colony No 17.
Soon after the transfer the administration of Shklou started accusing Statkevich of violating internal regulations and disobeying the colony administration. On April 9, the Shklou colony commission decided to transfer Statkevich to prison until the end of the sentence. In early May judge Barantsava upheld the penal colony’s motion to put Mikalai in prison once again.
