Political prisoner Autukhovich deprived of meeting with wife
The convicted entrepreneur from Vaukavysk
Mikalai Autukhovich risks losing the right to meet with his daughter and wife
planned for the end of July.
BelaPAN obtained the information from human rights activist Aleh Vouchak.
“I hoped that my daughter would come from Poland, and that she together with
my wife would come to meet me in the end of July. But it doesn’t always happen
as you plan. I don’t know for sure yet, but I was told that there’ll be no
meeting in July. I can meet with them only 6 months after the previous meeting.
Before, they told me that there were no hinders. I applied once again to check
if this is a final decision. Now I’m waiting for a reply,” the entrepreneur wrote
in his letter to Volha Mikalaichyk,
the director of the movie “A Journey Through an Endless War”, dedicated to
Autukhovich.
Vouchak emphasized that during the recent meeting of Autukhovich with his
mother, prison guards refused to pass a food parcel she had for her son. The
entrepreneur described the incident in his letter: “I understand that they
refused to pass the parcel for a reason. Everything had been agreed upon
Already before this meeting. But his time they cannot refuse to pass a parcel
because by the law, I can receive it after 25 July. But I’ll meet neither with
my wife, nor with my daughter.”
“I believe that someone above challenges me, tries to make me do something.
They’re fools to think they can press me this way. I will never deny my views
and life principles,” Autukhovich wrote in the letter.
Vouchak doesn’t understand why Autukhovich is refused a meeting with his wife
and daughter. “Everything went fine until now; he has never received a
reprimand from the prison administration. For a couple of months ago, Mikalai
wrote to his wife that his conviction regime was going to be changed to a
milder. It seems now that someone deliberately aggravates the situation around
the political prisoners before the amnesty. Autukhovich is an awarded Afghan
veteran with health issues, he should be amnestied. Maybe that is why this
nervous atmosphere is created around him, in order to provoke him to do
something,” Vouchak believes.
In May 2010, the Supreme Court convicted Autukhovich to 5 years and 2 months in
prison for transporting and possession of five patrons for a hunting rifle. On
17 January, in the Ivatsevichy reformatory #5 the entrepreneur was tried and
found guilty of a severe breach of the conviction order. Now Autukhovich is in
the Hrodna prison #1 in a double cell.
Human rights activists consider Autukhovich a political prisoner and point to
major procedural violations registered during the trial.
