Political prisoner Dzyanis Ivashyn has been put in punitive confinement again, his wife Volha reports.
Volha Ivashyna was informed of Dzyanis’ being in a disciplinary cell when she was trying to hand over a parcel with food and essential to her husband.
“Today they have refused to accept a parcel for Dzyanis, it contained sweets and Christmas Eve wafers, because he was put in solitary confinement again,” she said.
According to the wife, the imprisoned journalist was punished for some ‘violation’ of the internal rules, but the details were not provided. It is unknown how much time he will have to spend there; in Volha’s opinion, the authorities will be keeping him there for the entire holiday period.
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.
In late October, it became known that Ivashyn was also charged under Article 356 part 1 of the Criminal Code (‘treason against the state’). Under this article, he might face 7 to 15 years of imprisonment.
