English

Police confirm that jailed opposition activist Kanstantsin Zhukowski has been on hunger strike since Friday

Police have confirmed that Homyel opposition activist Kanstantsin Zhukowski has been on hunger strike since being jailed on Friday, BelaPAN reports.

According to an officer at the Petrykaw district police department, Mr. Zhukowski has not asked for a doctor since he was placed in the department's detention center.

Mr. Zhukowski, a coordinator of the Belarusian Christian Democracy party, was sentenced to 10 days in jail on charges of disorderly conduct and disobedience to police officers over a September 17 incident that landed him in the hospital.

Mr. Zhukowski was heading for a folk culture festival in the village of Lyaskovichy, Petrykaw district, when he was apprehended by police officers.

Speaking at a hearing at the Petrykaw District Court on September 24, the two police officers who had made the arrest alleged that Mr. Zhukowski had used obscene language and picked on passers-by.

Mr. Zhukowski said that the two policemen had beaten him up during the arrest, but Judge Syarhey Bahinski of the Petrykaw District Court ignored the medical report produced by him, which said that he had a bruise in the occipitoparietal area of the head, a shoulder dislocation and a thoracic spine injury.

The man, who spent two days and a half in the Petrykaw district hospital, was sent to jail despite he was still suffering from the effects of a head injury that he had sustained from the police brutality.

He announced that he was going on hunger strike to protest the sentence.

Mr. Zhukowski was discharged from the hospital in Petrykaw last Monday.

He links his arrest to the police's effort to prevent him from showing up at the festival, which was to be attended by Prime Minister Syarhey Sidorski, other senior government officials and foreign diplomats.