Belarusian State TV continues denigration of Dashkevich and Sannikau
An activist of human rights organization “Platform” Yury
Chyhileichyk was shown in a program on the Belarusian state TV. He tells that Sannikau
had problems in the colony because of Dashkevich. And a BT worker (an
off-screen voice) has gone go to even greater lengths and expanded that idea,
“Nasha Niva” writes.
He came to saying that Sannikau allegedly “voluntarily entered the cell with
“the buggered” (the lowest caste of inmates) and he has become a social outcast
now.” Even more, then there were insinuations made against him that he had been
called a non grata person by other prisoners.
Such a video item could not appear without an approval from the present chief
of the BT Henadz Davydzka.
It should be noted that the BT had never used such dirty tricks before, even
when Chykin and Zimouski were chiefs of the Belarusian state-run TV company.
By creating a TV program with such lies and smearing – and TV is watched in prisons
– the authorities expect to isolate Sannikau and Dashkevich from other
prisoners, to make their life in colonies unbearable.
According to families of political prisoners, in this way the authorities are
taking revenge on the prisoners for denial to write petitions for pardon.
In the video film Chyhileichyk's face is swollen. Back in the end of November a
human rights activist Andrei Bandarenka stated that Yury was beaten up in the
police department brutally.
Earlier the wife of the political prisoner Andrei Sannikau, Iryna Khalip,
stated that there was an attempt to place a person with a low status in the
criminal world into Sannikau's cell. But after the protests of the politician
that person was placed to a different cell.
The dirty story by BT was shown in the same program with Aliaksandr
Lukashenka’s statements that soon Belarus could become “the most
liberal state.”
Meanwhile, international human rights organizations equal the treatment of
inmates in Belarusian prisons to tortures, which are considered to be a crime
against humanity.
