Tsikhan Vosipau, a 25-year-old political prisoner convicted of hitting military personnel, is deprived of visits from his family, his letters are destroyed and he is placed in a penal cell.
In May, Belarusian National Technical University engineer Tsikhan Vosipau was sentenced to 11 years in heavy security prison for allegedly refusing to get out of his BMW at the order of the police and running over five soldiers of the internal troops with his car at night on August 10-11, 2020 and then sinking it in a water reservoir. Vosipau was found guilty under three articles of the Criminal Code at once: attempted murder of military personnel (part 1 of article 14 and article 362), participation in mass riots (part 2 of article 293) and false denunciation (part 1 of article 400).
On August 15th, Tsikhan started to serve his sentence in penal colony #15 near Mahiliou. After his transfer to the colony, the political prisoner was supposed to be quarantined, but instead, he ended up directly in the punishment cell for allegedly violating the internal regulations.
Volha Vosipava, the wife of Tsikhan, told the “Viasna” human rights activists about the pressure her husband had to face in the penal colony in a month and a half and why he was put in the punishment cell.
Four days after the transfer to the colony, Volha received a letter from her husband, which Tsikhan began writing back in prison, but finished in the colony:
“The transfer took place on Saturday and Sunday. Everything is fine. There are a lot of trees on the grounds, they are a joy to the eye. I dig them a lot. That’s it. Love you very much,” wrote Tsikhan.
However, after that, there was no news from Tsikhan. Then, on August 25, Volha came to the penal colony to deliver a parcel, but it was not accepted because Tsikhan was in the penal cell.
After the transfer, the lawyer came to see Tsikhan only on August 31. It turned out that the day after the transfer, the political prisoner was punished with a week in the cell for refusing to “stand up and introduce himself” in front of the administration. But before his release from the detention center, he was given another seven days for “lying down at an improper time”. Thus, right after the transfer, Vosipau was kept in the punishment cell for two weeks.
In addition, his wife was told that the political prisoner was deprived of parcels, which are allowed only three per year, as well as one of the two parcels. The next time Tsikhan will be able to receive parcels is only on December 24. Also in the colony political prisoner began to have problems with correspondence, said Volha. He receives letters only from his family and some friends. In addition, Tsikhan twice received acts of destruction of letters that failed to pass censorship. One of the letters was from Volha’s mother.
Vosipau was deprived of short-term visits for four months and long-term visits for six months for violation of the internal regulations. Considering the number of allowed visits, Tsikhan was left with only two short and one long visits.
While in the colony, Tsikhan was only able to call his wife twice, although calls in the colony are allowed once a week up to 15 minutes according to the detachment schedule. Tsikhan is only allowed to talk for five minutes at a time. Apart from that, Tsikhan did miss one of the calls. According to him, there were problems with the payphone.
At the beginning of September, the political prisoner was transferred to the unit, where he makes splinters — these are wood chips for kindling a fire. His wife says that Tsikhan missed his work, as he did almost nothing for the past year in the detention center, so he is glad to have it.
