18.06.2012 Group unveils report on rights abuses in prisons

A human rights group called Platforma on Monday unveiled a report on rights abuses in detention centers and correctional institutions in Belarus.

18.06.2012 Investigative Committee examining complaint by wife of imprisoned opposition activist Syarhey Kavalenka

A Vitsyebsk district department of the Investigative Committee is examining a complaint by Syarhey Kavalenka’s wife about a video of the imprisoned opposition activist that has been posted on the Internet by prison officers.

24.05.2012 Pre-trial detention: measure of restraint or punishment?

The law enforcement agencies of Belarus have drafted a bill “On Making Addenda and Amendments to the Criminal Code, the Code of Criminal Procedures, and the Penal Code of Belarus, as well as the Code of Administrative Offences”, said Mrs. Natallia Andreyeva, head of the department of procedural control over the investigation of crimes against property of the Investigative Committee of Belarus, at a briefing with a BelTA news agency reporter.

22.05.2012 Arrested Mikalai Dzemidzenka taken to hospital

Young Front activist Mikalai Dzemidzenka has been guarded from a detention centre to hospital No. 9.

21.05.2012 Viasna launches campaign to monitor penal system

All information concerning the analysis of penal law and penal system monitoring will be published in a thematic section on the website of the Human Rights Center “Viasna”.

The section’s expert is lawyer Pavel Sapelka.

Here is an article by Pavel Sapelka, dealing with the urgency of the issue of human rights violations against people in custody, those serving sentences and held in other institutions.

21.05.2012 Baranavichy human rights defender urges MPs to humanize penal legislation

Mrs. Anzhalika Kambalava, member of Baranavichy office of the Belarusian Helsinki Committee, has sent an open letter to chairman of the House of Representatives’ Legislation Commission Mikalai Samaseika, together with MPs Sviatlana Pishch and Anatol Vankovich, suggesting humanization of the country’s penal legislation.

20.05.2012 Growing pressure on political prisoners

Mikalay Statkievich got a reprimand, Eduard Lobau’s mail is ”filtered”, Aliaksandar Frantskievich wasn’t allowed a meeting with his parents.

27.04.2012 Convicted anarchist denied meeting with mother

The administration of Ivatsevichy penal colony No. 22 has not allowed Aliaksandr Frantskevich’s meeting with his mother scheduled for 4 May.

25.04.2012 Marek Migalski demands to stop torture of Mikalai Statkevich

A member of the European Parliament, Marek Migalski, has applied to the Corrections Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Belarus.

20.04.2012 Pavel Sevyarynets denied parole

The release on parole was denied to him, though according to the staff of special detention facility No. 7 in the village of Kuplin “he applies his best efforts to mend his way”.

18.04.2012 Syarhey Kavalenka receives no medical attention, wife says

Doctors at the Navinki psychiatric hospital are doing nothing to help Syarhey Kavalenka recover after his debilitating hunger strike, the wife of the 37-year-old opposition activist told BelaPAN on Tuesday.

17.04.2012 Mikalai Autukhovich has serious health problems

Back pain is caused by kidney problems, and also by a cold the political prisoner had caught while he was in the punitive isolation ward.

17.04.2012 Statkevich shares cell with killer from “death squad”

The monitoring group of Platform association managed to get information about confinement conditions for Mikalai Statkevich in a prison in Mahilou.

30.03.2012 Former prisoner appeals detention conditions

Mrs. Alena Dubovik, detained by riot police during a benefit concert in Minsk on 24 March and sentenced to three days of arrest, has lodged a complaint with the city’s prosecuting authorities against illegal actions by the police during her arrest and the poor detention conditions in Minsk detention center in Akrestsin Street.

29.03.2012 Hunger strike caused irreversible damage to Kavalenka's health, wife says

Syarhey Kavalenka's wife has sounded an alarm over the rapidly deteriorating health of the imprisoned opposition activist, saying that his lengthy hunger strike has already caused "irreversible" damage to his internal organs.