Colony Hides Information on Suicides

The Human Rights Center Viasna requested confirmation or refutation from Navasady colony (Barysaŭ district) about alleged four suicides and two attempts of suicide there. The reply that came from the Ministry of Home Affairs, the Department of Execution of Sentences, was not satisfactory, so Viasna is filing a request to the prosecutor’s office.

Prisoners of correctional colony No 14 informed Viasna about four suicides that had happened within a short period of time and two attempted suicides. The chairperson of Viasna Ales Bialiatski asked the Minister of Home Affairs Ihar Shunevich to confirm or refute the information, and to hold an inquiry into reasons and circumstances of the suicides, to check actions of the administration of the colony.

The reply signed by the first deputy head of the Department of Execution of Sentences Ivan Myslitski says that “the facts mentioned in the request are not true.” Meantime, he refers to point 40 of the Appendix to the Ruling of the Council of Ministers No 783, dated August 12, 2014, stating that “information about activities of bodies of criminal-executive system which organizes execution of sentences is classified, aimed for internal use only.”

Human rights defenders have filed a request to the prosecutor general, referring to the Law on Information, Informatization and Protection of Information. The lawyers argue that “information about accidents in establishments of the Department of Execution of Sentences at MHA, including those accompanied with violations of law and breaches of rights, freedoms and lawful interests of convicts, when this information reflects the public security situation in DES MHA, cannot be restricted.”  Viasna calls on the prosecutor general to hold an inquiry into the mentioned facts of suicides in colony No 14 and reply to the point.