Belarus activists to press for recognising arrested blogger as political prisoner


The Belarusian Christian Democrats are set to press for considering Eduard Palchys, the arrested editor of popular 1863x.com website, as a political prisoner.

On June 13, the first meeting of the public committee ‘Freedom for Eduard Palchys’ was held at the Minsk office of the Belarusian People’s Front Party. The Committee took a number of decisions on conducting the campaign of solidarity with the blogger.

In case the founder and main author of 1863x.com is recognized political prisoner, the Belarusian authorities are highly likely to be release him before the parliamentary election which is scheduled for September, 11, politician and former political prisoner Pavel Sevyarynets said.

“According to our information, after the recent solidarity action Palchys was transferred to Zhodzina [prison]. This is a very bad place,” Sevyarynets said.

The politician came up with the idea of carrying out a public examination on June 21, i.e. he expects Belarusian historians and linguists to become familiar with the contents of the website and conclude whether the charges against him are legally valid.

The activists also want to seek famous Belarusians’ help.

“We should ask Svetlana Alexievich, Uladzimir Arlou, Zmitser Vaitsyushkevich and others to be his references,” Sevyarynets said.

Eduard Palchys aka Jhon Silver created 1863x.com, a blog dedicated to the current political developments in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine, as well as Belarusian history and culture. The unsigned materials sharply criticized the regimes of Alyaksandr Lukashenka and Vladimir Putin.

According to Silver, two criminal cases were brought against him in 2015 for his activities in the blog – for allegedly inciting ethnic strife (in particular, for the article ‘Kill the Russian World’) and spreading pornography.

The blogger decided to hide in Ukraine. All the while he lived in Kyiv, from where he continued to work on the blog. But when the blogger went to a meeting in Russia in January 2016, he was arrested and put in jail. At the beginning of 2016, Sputnik i Pogrom, an extreme right-wing Russian organization, reported that the real name of the ‘Russophobe from Belarus’ is Eduard Palchys.

On May 26, Palchys was transferred from Russia’s Bryansk predetention centre to Belarus, which has not been officially confirmed yet. The activists believe that he has been put to Minsk remand prison in Valadarski street.

belsat.eu

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