Mikalai Autukhovich does not count on parole

On the New Year's Eve the political prisoner Mikalai Autukhovich sent a letter to his friend, human rights defender Aleh Vouchak, who had also served in Afghanistan during the Soviet rule.

The political prisoner gave detailed answers to all questions and expressed views on various political issues, which seemed quite strange to Mr. Vouchak, taking into consideration the prison censorship. "It is better to send him letters by registered mail, this increases the chances that he would receive everything," concludes Aleh Vouchak, who often informs the prisoner about his human rights activism:

"He praised me and said that it is also defense for others in many respects. Of course, he expects to be kept in jail up to the end of his term, he has an adequate view on it. He thanked me for the photos of veterans of the war in Afghanistan which I had sent him. He received all of them and even indicated the quantity of the photos, as I had asked him to do. He reads a lot, but still pays more interest to news. I'll be preparing a new letter for him."

What concerns the prospectives of the release of all political prisoners, Mr. Autukhovich thinks that Aliaksandr Lukashenka's advisers didn't manage to convince him that it would foster the improvement of the situation inside the country.

Mikalai Autukhovich is currently kept in the Hrodna prison, serving a 5-year prison term for the alleged storage of five ammunition cartridges. He says that in reality the imprisonment was a revenge for his attempts to expose corrupt officials in Hrodna and Minsk.