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Hunger-striking Syarhey Kavalenka denied meeting with Protestant pastor

Syarhey Kavalenka has been denied a meeting with a Protestant pastor, the imprisoned opposition activist`s wife, Alena, told BelaPAN on Wednesday.

The 37-year-old Kavalenka, who continues his debilitating hunger strike, was transferred from a detention center in Vitsyebsk to a prison hospital in Minsk in late February as he is said to be very unwell.

The administration of Detention Center No. 1, which runs the hospital, dismissed the family’s request that Mr. Kavalenka be allowed a meeting with famous Protestant pastor Ernest Sabila, a Gulag survivor. It said that approval by Vitsyebsk’s Pershamayski District Court, where Mr. Kavalenka had been tried, was needed.

“Sabila was expected to visit the detention center on March 7 to meet with Syarhey,” said Alena. “The pastor hoped that he would persuade him to end the strike."

Mr. Kavalenka, who weighed 83 kilograms before his hunger strike, has lost at least 28 kilograms and developed kidney problems, said the woman. But he is still determined to continue the strike until his conviction is quashed, she said.

She said that her husband was scheduled to be placed in a civilian hospital later on Wednesday for a medical examination.

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, Kavalenka was arrested at home on a charge of violating probation rules four times and placed in a 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.
Four days later, Mr. Kavalenka was transferred from the Vitsyebsk jail to the prison hospital in Minsk.