English

Syarhey Kavalenka continues hunger strike, is very unwell, wife says

Syarhey Kavalenka continues his debilitating hunger strike and is very unwell, the imprisoned opposition activist's wife, Alena, told BelaPAN on Friday.

Mr. Kavalenka, 37, was transferred from a detention center in Vitsyebsk to a prison hospital in Minsk earlier this week.

The activist was visited by his lawyer on March 1. "The lawyer told me that the husband had been placed in the prison hospital only for a health check. No one is going to withdraw him from the hunger strike," the woman said.

According to Alena, Mr. Kavalenka and the lawyer have already written an appeal against his sentence and it may be filed with a court on Friday.

Mr. Kavalenka does not trust the hospital's staff, she said. "Both he and I will demand his transfer to a normal hospital. I will write an appeal to this effect to the corrections department. Otherwise Syarhey may simply die," she noted.

In May 2010, the member of the Conservative Christian Party was sentenced to a suspended three-year prison sentence after he put a white-red-white flag on top of Vitsyebsk's tallest Christmas tree in early January 2010.

On December 19, 2011, Mr. Kavalenka was arrested at home on a charge of violating probation rules four times and placed in the detention center. He has been on hunger strike and force-fed since then.

On February 24, a district judge in Vitsyebsk sentenced him to two years and one month in a low security correctional institution on a charge of violating probation rules. Mr. Kavalenka told his wife a few days later that he would continue his hunger strike "until the end."
Mr. Kavalenka is said to have lost some 30 kilometers during the fast.