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Jailed opposition youth Barazenka ends hunger strike

Alyaksandr Barazenka has started eating after a hunger strike that lasted for some seven days, the jailed opposition youth’s lawyer, Pavel Sapelka said.

The 20-year-old made the decision after Thursday’s meeting with the lawyer who talked him out of continuing the protest.

“He feels well,” the lawyer said.

News of Mr. Barazenka’s hunger strike transpired on November 17.

According to Mr. Sapelka, the date of his client’s trial may be announced either on November 21 or on November 24.

Valery Yesman, a judge mentioned by Alyaksandr Lukashenka while he was speaking about a government corruption scandal last week, is to preside over the trial.

Mr. Barazenka, who was charged in early 2008 over his participation in an unsanctioned demonstration this past January and placed on the police wanted list after he fled prosecution, was arrested following his voluntary appearance at the Minsk city police department on October 27 for questioning. The young man has since been held in the detention center on Valadarskaha Street.

Mr. Barazenka is facing a charge of “active participation in group actions grossly disturbing the public peace” under Part 1 of the Criminal Code’s Article 342 in connection with the demonstration, which was staged in downtown Minsk in protest against the government’s crackdown on small business owners.

A total of 13 youths were later charged under the Criminal Code in connection with that demonstration. This past spring nine of them – Mikhail Pashkevich, Alyaksey Bondar, Artsyom Dubski, Alyaksandr Straltsow, Alyaksandr Charnyshow, Mikhail Kryvaw, Tatsyana Tsishkevich, Pavel Vinahradaw, and Mikhail Subach – were sentenced to two years’ restricted freedom without their being sent to correctional institutions.

Seventeen-year-old Maksim Dashuk received an 18-month restricted freedom sentence from Judge Yesman.
Two young men, Uladzimir Syarheyew and Anton Koypish, were each fined 3,500,000 rubels ($1,640).

Mr. Barazenka, who was studying at a university in Wroclaw at the time under the Polish government’s Kastus Kalinowski educational assistance program, claims that he did not receive any summons or notification of his prosecution and learned about it from the Internet and his associates.

In 2007, he was expelled as a first-year student from Belarusian State University following his participation in a protest against the abolition of students’ privilege of paying half the fare. //BelaPAN