Political prisoner Mikalai Autukhovich goes on hunger strike

The wrongly convicted prisoner of conscience has serious problems with health. This hunger strike can kill him.

Lawyer Pavel Sapelka told Radio Svaboda that Vaukavsyk businessman Mikalai Autukhovich has gone on hunger strike.

Mikalai Autukhovich has problems with his teeth, he needs denture treatment, but the Minsk detention facility, where the political prisoner has been kept for more than a year, denies medical care to him.

Autukhovich sent an appeal to the deputy head of the corrections department responsible for medical care demanding to render aid to him. The appeal brought no results. Autukhovich supposes it wasn’t handed in to the recipient. He has gone on hunger strike in protest.

According to Pavel Sapelka, Mikalai Autukhovich has been on strike for the second day, the state of health is normal yet.

Political prisoner Mikalai Autukhovich and his friend Uladzimir Asipenka are persecuted for their active struggle for the rights of entrepreneurs. Protesting against the unlawful arrest, Autukhovich had a 90-day hunger strike in prison that ruined his health. He lost 30 kilograms of weight. The political prisoner has pancreatitis and a number of other chronic diseases.

The Supreme Court of Belarus sentenced Mikalai Autukhovich to five years and two months of imprisonment in a medium security penal colony. Uladzimir Asipenka got three years in a minimum security penal colony.