Translated material
Quiet slow murder
How the Belarusian political prisoners die
Photo: ITAR-TASS / Vadim Rymakov
The Belarusian journalist and activist Igor Glacin was put in an article in a small magazine. On February 19, he died. The glacier is the fifth Belarusian political prisoner, which will never be released.
Igor died not in the nurses of the Bobruisk colony No. 2 - he was brought to the district hospital. The official cause of death is cardiac arrest. Of the three years under the article of the Criminal Code of the “slander against Lukashenko”, he managed to serve two. And no one knows what it cost him: for two whole years to hold out alive in the Belarusian prison.
Igor glacier was 64 years old. He is a disabled person of the second group in heart disease. And other diseases were added in prison. He was undergoing an operation on the gastrointestinal tract and brought out a stoma-a hole in the abdominal cavity. The glacier was forced to live with a galley. In prison, this is unbearably not only morally, but also hygienically.
Former political prisoner Alexei Golovkin just the other day told in an interview with former political prisoner journalist Olga Klaskovskaya about how he was in the medical units of the Bobruisk colony a year ago with Igor glacier:
“The state of his health was already terrible then. He was not even distributed into the detachment. Igor was waiting and hoping that he would be taken to the city in a civilian hospital and at least a little heal. Igor had a stoma, to which a special bag was attached so that he could go to the toilet.
What was indignant at the most - colony officers did not allow Igor to take a shower, although there was a normal shower with hot water in the medical units. He had to fight with the jailers all the time for every trip to the shower, it was a nightmare.
Igor was not allowed to be convinced. He even asked me to transfer to the head of the [disabled] detachment to lead Igor into a car, because he was all over. Igor held on very dignity, a real man. At the same time, he told me that he would most likely die in a colony. He said that he was getting worse and, if they do not provide qualified medical care, he would simply not reach the release. ”
They did not provide. He did not reach.
And that article in the party journal "Pazytsi" of the Belarusian Social-Democratic Party, for which Igor Glaznik received de jure three years in prison, and de facto deaths was published in June 2021 and was called "International recognized neutrality of Belarus-a guarantee of security in the OSCE region." In this article, he wrote that Russia, who left Lukashenko with his support in power in 2020, would draw Belarus into a global confrontation with the civilized world. Here is a quote:
“Russia's attempt to preserve Lukashenko under the authorities through the“ Union State ”will lead to catastrophic consequences for the world order and create a precedent in world practice, when the countries that have received security guarantees in the Budapest memorandum will be drawn into armed confrontation.”
In fact, he predicted everything long before the start of the glacier was arrested in April 2022. At first, according to the good old Belarusian tradition, they sent 15 days in an administrative case. The Belarusian security forces love to use just such a scheme: while a person sits “on a day”, they have time to calmly and without a hurry to study his phone, correspondence, pages in social networks and concoct the accusation with which he will be taken directly from the IVS in a pre -trial detention center. Further - the court, the colony, and for some death.
Igor’s last post on Facebook* - dated November 18, 2021:
“I must say that no one will deal with the genocide in Belarus if Russia attacks Ukraine at that time, which is not excluded based on circumstances.”
In early December, he was arrested for 15 days, but at that time it was still released at the end of the deadline. True, the computer was taken, so it no longer appeared in social networks. And it will not appear anymore.
Igor Glacier died of cardiac arrest. And the first Belarusian political prisoner, whose death in the colony shocked Belarusians, is Vitold Ashurok, with the same official cause of death: a sudden cardiac arrest. Vitold had no disability and serious diseases, he was a healthy 50-year-old man. He was arrested on September 19, 2020, and in January 2021 he was sentenced to five years in prison for participating in protests. A month after the sentence, he wrote to his friends that he perceives his five -year term as an assessment “excellent”. He envied those who leave the dictatorship in the past - including themselves in the future. On May 21, he was found dead in the cell of the schizo of the Shklovskaya colony.
The relatives were told that Vitold died of cardiac arrest. And on May 25, the Investigative Committee released a video from the camera. The record shows how ashurok falls and hit his head. A guard enters the camera, quickly puts a bandage and leaves. Then, already with his head bandaged, Vitold falls and no longer rises. And they call it a "sudden cardiac arrest." A person loses consciousness in the cell, but even a paramedic does not lead to him from the medical unit - just the escort bandages his head, as he considers necessary, and calmly leaves. And if he called an ambulance? Yes, of course, I know about the subjunctive mood and history. But for almost three years it is "what if?" It does not give rest.
Nikolai Klimovich, a blogger from Pinsk, had a disability, like a glacier, by a heart disease. The 61-year-old blogger suffered a heart attack and stroke. He was put behind a smiley under a caricature on Lukashenko. Moreover, before the trial, Nikolai was under the subscription about the loss - after three days in the IVS he had a heart attack, and the security forces sent him home away from sin. Everyone was sure that if under the subscription, then there would be no deadline: they would give conditionally or a fine.
When the judge announced the verdict - the year of imprisonment under the article “insult Lukashenko”, Klimovich said that he would not be released. He was not mistaken. Behind bars, he lived a little more than two months.
Nikolai was taken into custody in the courtroom on February 23 last year. Without waiting for the appeal, he was sent to the Vitebsk colony. On May 5, Nikolai Klimovich died. On the same day, the Ministry of Internal Affairs included it in the list of extremists.
Neither the Department of Punishment, nor the Ministry of Internal Affairs, nor the colony administration, where he died, did not say a word about the causes of death. They didn’t bother: but what can I say, you know, a goner-disabled, not a tenant. But about the death of a 57-year-old artist Ales Pushkin two months after Klimovich nevertheless spoke: a perforated ulcer of the stomach. Pushkin was no longer in the colony - he was transferred to the prison regime, to the Grodno "cover". And when Vertukha still decided to call an ambulance and take the artist to the civilian hospital, it was too late.
Ales Pushkin in Belarus has been famous since ancient times. It was he, together with the Nobel laureate Alees Belyatsky (human rights activist, serving a ten -year term) organized in 1988 the first unauthorized procession from the center of Minsk to Kuropaths, to the place of the mass execution of the Belarusian intelligentsia in 1937, and served the first in his life for five days. It was he who, on March 25, 1989, for the first time in the latest Belarusian history, he went to the city center to celebrate Volya Day (99 percent of Belarusians did not hear about this historical date then) - with white balls and paper stork - and received two years conditionally. He was July 21, 1999, on the fifth anniversary of the presidential election, rolled a car with manure to his residence and dumped him on his steps, and threw a portrait of Lukashenko on top with the inscription “For five -year fruitful labor” - and again received two years conditionally.
Ales Pushkin lived in his native village of Bobr, painted paintings and worked on the restoration of churches and castles. From time to time he was planted in administrative affairs, but after the protests of 2020, when they began to plant everyone, there was no chance for Pushkin unnoticed. He was arrested on March 30, 2021. The reason for the detention was the portrait of Evgeny Zhikhar, exhibited in the Grodno Gallery. Zhikhar is a Belarusian who created a partisan detachment after the war, destroying the Chekists and Partyers. Pushkin was judged under the article “Execution of Nazism” and sentenced to five years of strict regime. The process over him was closed almost immediately-Pushkin in the first minutes of the court hearing, when he was asked for usual in such cases “where he served, where he worked,” said: “I was a Soviet occupier from 1984 to 1986 in the Republic of Afghanistan as part of the 181st regiment of the helicopter squadron.” And then lay on the bench and refused to get up.
In April 2022, Pushkin was transferred to the colony, and from there six months later - to the covered prison. There he sat until July 2023. And then - a perforated ulcer and death. In order to die from the sampling of an ulcer in our century, only one thing is needed: so that they do not provide medical care in a timely manner.
Just as it was not provided by the 50-year-old Vadim Khosko, who died a month ago in the intensive care of the Vitebsk hospital. Too late he was brought there from the colony.
Vadim - ITSHNIK, worked in a company engaged in the development of cryptographic information protection software. He was detained in April last year for donates. The article is “financing of extremist activity”. The verdict is three years of imprisonment. But he did not manage to sit down for a year - he died of pneumonia on the night of January 9.
Cardiac failure, perforated ulcer, pneumonia - the list of diagnoses can be much wider, and the point is not in them, oddly enough. Just
In the current Belarusian reality, everything has become easier and more convenient. You no longer need to specifically kill political prisoners, stain your hands, develop plans, hide corpses, invent legends. It’s just not to do anything.
Do not call an ambulance, do not give medicine, do not enter the camera on time. And all. Death from natural causes. An autopsy will show. If it is at all.