Sevyarynets: Conditions in labour camp on the verge of survival

The increased public utilities fees in a labor camp in the village of Kuplin (the Pruzhany district) brought prisoners to the brink of survival.

Each prisoner has to pay 340,000 rubles a month for a 3-bed room of 12 square metres with rusty cold water, slightly warm radiators and no hot water. The room cost 160,000 rubles last month and 40,000 rubles in November, Radio Racyja reports.

“Inmates work at a collective farm and earn 500,000-700,000 rubles per month. Besides public utility fees, a lot of prisoners have to pay alimonies and other payments. 340,000 is survival limit for the inmates,” political prisoner Pavel Sevyarynets says. “They are even beyond the survival limit. They have no money left to buy food. What’s now? Starve or steal? It’s a mockery. Our penitentiary system today is a holdover of Stalin’s times. It is a Soviet punitive system. People cannot be improved or encouraged for a normal life here. People suffer and wish for the end of their sentence to get out of here and live as normal people live.”

As Pavel Sevyarynets thinks, they don’t see a way of living they could strive for.