Political prisoner Dzyanis Ivashyn’s mother receives no letters from son for over 4 months
Lyudmila Ivashyna, the mother of the imprisoned journalist Dzyanis Ivashyn, has not received letters or postcards from her son for more than four months.
“127 days have passed since I got a message from my son. Is he stripped of the right of correspondence? I am embarrassed for our country. It is painful and shameful,” she said on Facebook.
Dzyanis Ivashyn, a Hrodna-based journalist contributing to Informnapalm OSINT community and the Novy Chas newspaper, was detained on 12 March 2021. On the same day, the officers of the Belarusian State Security Committee (KGB) raided his flat in Hrodna as well as his parents’ place.
On the back of post-election protests in Belarus, Novy Chas published the investigative report by Ivashyn in which he said that a number of former soldiers of the Ukrainian special forces unit Berkut were taking part in the brutal crackdown on Belarusian protesters. In 2014, pro-Yanukovych Berkut riot police were tainted by killings and torture of Euromaidan defenders. When the unit was disbanded, many Berkutters fled to Russia and Belarus, where some of them were spotted in dispersing peaceful rallies, Ivashyn stated.
On March 24, the Belarusian human rights community recognised Ivashyn as a political prisoner. According to human rights defenders, Ivashyn’s actions were a non-violent exercise of the freedom to seek and disseminate information, which falls under the protection of Art. 19 of the ICCPR and cannot be classified as ‘influencing a police officer’ in order to ‘change the nature of his lawful activities’.
In June, it became known that Dzyanis Ivashyn who was earlier placed in a disciplinary cell underwent a cardiac seizure there.
The man was accused of ‘interference in the activities of a police officer’ (Article 365 of the Criminal Code). In late October, it became known that Ivashyn was also charged under Art. 356-1 (‘treason against the state’). Under this article, he might face 7 to 15 years of imprisonment.
