Malarita farmer Mikalai Byalchuk served two months in prison for assaulting a police officer. Now the man has been released and spoke of torture. According to him, behind bars, instead of providing medical care, the guards told him that he should be poured gasoline on and set on fire alive.
On October 12, riot police grabbed Mikalai, beating him and his relatives, to prosecute him for the conflict with road police inspector two years prior. The farmer did not recognize his guilt and held a hunger strike in prison as a protest. Now Mikalai Byalchuk is going to appeal his sentence in the higher courts. Meanwhile, his brother — Alyaksandr Byalchuk — still remains in jail, accused of resisting the police.
Mikalai Byalchuk says he does not regret his actions and tells in detail how he was treated in pretrial facility.
“I was taken to the jail, undressed there — to put it mildly. They tore the jacket and pants, even my underwear. They threw me naked into the camera. The official ordered the inmates to physically abuse me, pour water on me, bleach water. I was poured cold water on daily. For two days I was unconscious. For two weeks I had a temperature. I wrote a letter to the head of the medical unit, wrote to everywhere, but I was never given a single tablet. I could not eat, the food did not pass. I wrote letters, but they were not passed through. Therefore, I declared a hunger strike. I had it for 14 days. But somehow I survived”.
The farmer says he will continue to fight, even after he was let out.
“I was facing from five to seven years in prison. I was given two months. They can not absolve a collective farmer. We are innocent, so we’ll seek the truth,” says Byalchuk.
See more in the video.
