FIDH and Viasna demand to stop cruel treatment and torture of Mikita Likhavid
The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and
the Human Rights Centre Viasna demand
to stop cruel treatment and torture of political prisoner Mikita Likhavid
Paris-Minsk, 9 June 2011
As it became known to the Human Rights Center Viasna, on 27 May 21-year-old Mikita Likhavid,
who is serving a sentence of imprisonment for a term of 3.5 years in maximum
security colony in Navapolatsk after participating in the protest rally on 19
December 2010 in
Minsk, was put in a punitive isolation cell. The reason is that he refuses to
sign the commitment to comply with the prison regime because he considers himself
as unlawfully convicted.
It is worth reminding that on 29 March 2011 the
Partyzanski District Court of Minsk sentenced M.Likhavid to 3.5 years of
imprisonment under Part 2 of Art. 293 of the Criminal Code (participation in
mass riot).
The Human Rights Centre Viasna, an organization member of the FIDH in Belarus,
monitored the trial of M.Likhavid and concluded that the verdict issued by the
court was unlawful and politically
motivated.
According to the received information, M. Likhavid is
subject to inhuman and degrading treatment that is in fact torture in the penal
colony in Navapolatsk.
Conditions of detention in punitive isolation cells
of Belarus
became the subject of sharp criticism of the Belarusian and international human
rights organizations. FIDH also drew attention to the conditions of
detention in jail in its report on conditions in Belarusian prisons.
Thus, during their stay in
prison inmates are not provided with walks, are not given bedding, they are
forbidden to lie or sit on the bunk or on the floor (bunks are fixed to the
walls during the daytime). In addition, convicted persons are prohibited to wear
warm clothes, and the temperature in cells is often very low. Convicts are in
fact deprived of sleep, fell cold all the time and are constantly denied access
to free air. These conditions obviously do not meet minimal international
standards of detention.
In the case of M.Likhavid his placement in the punitive
isolator cannot be considered as anything else by an additional instrument of
pressure on him by the Belarusian authorities.
In this regard, we demand to:
- stop the cruel treatment
and torture as well as any other psychological and physical pressure on Mikita Likhavid;
- drop the criminal case against participants of
the peaceful demonstration of 19 December 2010, immediately and unconditionally
release all those detained in the case, pardon or amnesty those who have been convicted
and cancel any consequences of conviction (criminal record and other restrictions
on rights);
- bring the conditions of
prisoners in punitive isolation cells in the penal colonies and prisons into
compliance with international standards of detention.