Member of electoral teams of Uladzimir Niakliayeu and Mikalai Statkevich has been kept in mental hospital for 15 days already
The citizen of Navalukoml Piatro Baravik expressed the wish to collect signatures in support of two potential candidates for the presidential position, Mikalai Statkevich and Uladzimir Niakliayeu. However, he is unable to do it as he has been forcedly put in the Lepel mental hospital.
Before it, the electoral teams of the candidates sent him the documents for creation of the local branches of the electoral teams of Niakliayeu and Statkevich. However, the envelope was delivered unsealed and a part of the documents was missing – in particular, those related to Uladzimir Niakliayeu’s campaign.
Piatro Baravik phoned to the police and demanded that they investigated the incident and also check whether there were no traits of radiation on the envelope. For this joke the police first took him for a psychiatric examination in Navalukoml, and then – to the mental hospital in Lepel.
The situation is commented by the coordinator of the electoral team of Mikalai Statkevich in the Vitsebsk region Aliaksei Haurutsikau:
‘First of all, if psychiatrist V.Krasouskaya considered my colleague socially dangerous, why did she let him go home? And why a police car came to his house in an hour and took him to the mental hospital? Why wasn’t it done by an ambulance? The procuracy answered that the police hadn’t exceeded their powers by these actions, but just helped the medics. Even if it is really so, I have pretensions to the medics, which I set forth in my complaint to the Ministry of Health Care. It’s clear that socially dangerous people must be isolated at once. But it was another way round with Mr. Baravik. At first he was let go. Wasn’t it because he behaved adequately? And why was he taken to the mental hospital an hour later? By the way, he said that he was met there with the following words: ‘We will keep you here for about seven years if you don’t stop dealing with politics!’. I will also write to the Ministry of Health Care about it, because people have the right to have political convictions, even if they are registered as mentally ill. Meanwhile, though Piatro Baravik is officially recognized as invalid because of his illness, he has helped us to collect signatures during previous elections, and has done his work well enough.
Finally, I want to say what I was told at the Vitsebsk regional post office in response to my complaint. They said that I wouldn’t be able to prove anything, as the documents were in a paper envelope, not in a plastic one, and they will bear no responsibility for the loss of the documents. By the way, another member of the electoral team of Uladzimir Niakliayeu, the citizen of Navalukoml Ala Karaliova, didn’t receive the documents for creation of an electoral team – she also received an unsealed envelope. Baravik’s wife was promised that he would be signed out of the mental hospital this week, but I consider this incident as a quite eloquent example!’
Human Rights Defenders for Free Elections
