He is gastrogavaged with Bellakt formula milk in the psychiatric unit of the penal colony hospital.
Since Sunday Siarhei Kavalenka has been force-fed six times a day and from time to time prison doctors put him on a drip against his will. According to Alena Kavalenka, were her husband to be placed in a civilian hospital he himself would agree to quit hunger-striking. It is the prison doctors whom Siarhei does not trust, his wife said.
«I find it difficult to judge the colleagues’ actions without possessing comprehensive information. But in any case, Bellakt milk formula is better than nothing,» Andrey Vitushka, an intensivist from Minsk, told Belsat TV. He would rather Siarhei Kavalenka were moved to a civilian hospital. Such a long-lasting hunger-strike could not help affecting his health state and work of internal parts of the organism.
The activist of the Conservative Christian Party of the Belarusian People’s Front (CCP-BPF) was repeatedly detained for organising a number of protest actions. In May 2010 Siarhei Kavalenka received three-year suspended sentence for hanging out a white-red-white flag on the 40-meter New Year Tree in the center of Vitsebsk. This action was defined as «major violation of public order».
On December 19, 2011 Kavalenka was arrested in connection with criminal proceedings under Art. 415 of the Criminal Code (evasion of liberty restraint service). Being accused of violation of parole and facing three-year imprisonment on December, 20 he went on hunger-striking in protest.
On March 31, 2012 his mother and wife were to visit him but the women were denied permission to do it. The political prisoner’s condition has considerably worsened and now it is close to critical, a prison doctor of Vitsba-3 penal colony said.
Belsat
