One more week in punitive confinement imposed on political prisoner Dzyanis Ivashyn
Hrodna journalist Dzyanis Ivashyn has been behind bars for 228 days. He has not been given letters for a long time.
According to his wife Volha Ivashyna, Dzyanis was not released from a disciplinary cell after spending a week. A special commission extended his being in punitive confinement for another week, the woman said. At the same time, he is allowed to see his defence lawyer and have time in the open air.
“The only thing that Dzyanis lacks is information; the prison authorities are not giving him publications to which he is subscribed as well as letters, of course. But Dzyanis keeps calm, confident, and cheerful. He sends greetings and thanks to everyone,” Volha wrote on Facebook.
It is unknown what was the ground for Ivashyn’s being placed in a disciplinary cell, but the wife says that the number of ‘violations’ he was faulted for and the severity of penalties for them come as a surprise even to the political prisoner’s cellmates.
Dzyanis Ivashyn, a Hrodna-based journalist contributing to Informnapalm OSINT community and the Novy Chas newspaper, was detained on March, 12. 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 September, Aleh Varanetski, the head of the KGB investigation department in Hrodna region, informed Volha Ivashyna of levelling two charges against her husband. Dzyanis Ivashyn was accused of a ‘less serious’ crime and a ‘grievous’ crimes, the officer said in a written reply to Ivashyna’s request. There is every likelihood that when mentioning ‘a less serious crime’ the authorities refer to Article 365 of the Criminal Code (‘interference in the activities of a police officer’), under the journalist was detained. But there is no information about the ‘grievous crime’ Ivashyn has been accused of.
