English

Alyaksandr Malchanaw released from prison

Young opposition activist Alyaksandr Malchanaw was released Saturday from a prison in the village of Navasady in the Barysaw district, Minsk region, on completion of his 18-month term.

Mr. Malchanaw, currently 25, was one of the 28 people who were sentenced to prison terms in connection with their participation in a post-election protest staged in Minsk on the night of December 19, 2010. He was arrested in his home city of Barysaw on January 6, 2011 and ultimately found guilty of participation in mass disturbances and sentenced to three years in prison.

He was granted a presidential pardon and released from a correctional facility in Mahilyow in September 2011.

After less than seven months, on April 9, 2012, Mr. Malchanaw was sentenced to one and a half years in a medium-security correctional institution on a charge of stealing $54 worth of scrap metal.

His co-defendant, Artsyom Ihnatsikaw, was given a suspended 18-month prison sentence with one year’s probation.

Mr. Malchanaw denied any wrongdoing during his trial and his lawyer condemned the sentence as unfair and disproportionate.

Mr. Malchanaw told the judge that after he had been convicted and served eight months in prison for participating in the post-election protest, he was denied a job wherever he went, and that gathering scrap metal was his only source of income. According to him, he and his friend Ihnatsikaw picked up rusty metal objects in an abandoned and unguarded storage yard of Zhodzina Heavy Forging Plant because they were aware that people had not been prevented from gathering scrap metal there. He pointed out that the prosecution had failed to prove that the allegedly stolen metal objects constituted “equipment” really valued by the company.

Messrs. Malchanaw and Ihnatsikaw were apprehended in the area of the forging plant on January 20, 2012. Mr. Malchanaw was held in a pre-trial detention center until the trial, while Mr. Ihnatsikaw was under house arrest.

Mr. Malchanaw was an activist of an opposition youth organization called Zubr (Bison) in the early 2000s. According to him, after his mother was fired from her job because of his political activities, he quit school and signed up for a painting and decorating course. He later became a student of International Humanities and Economics Institute in Minsk.

The administration of the detention center in Zhodzina did not allow Mr. Malchanaw to attend the funeral of his mother, who died in June 2012.

In late October 2011, Mr. Malchanaw was arrested on suspicion of spraying paint on several red-green flags in Barysaw and could be charged with dishonoring the state flag. He was held in jail for several days and eventually released without a charge.

In a trial that took place in Correctional Institution No. 14 in Navasady on July 4, a judge decided that Mr. Malchanaw should be placed under “preventive police supervision” for six months.

After his release early on Saturday morning, Mr. Malchanaw went to his home in Barysaw.

“While in prison I was engaged in education and qualified as a general machine operator,” he told reporters. “Now I am going to study and work. In any case, I am not going to give up my convictions and social activities.”

“The prison conditions always leave much to be desired, but I cannot say they are particularly terrible,” Mr. Malchanaw said in an interview with BelaPAN. “Naturally, there are unsanitary conditions there. Naturally, the food is crappy.”

“This facility is somewhat worse than my previous prison in terms of conditions, but it is better in terms of rules,” said Mr. Malchanaw, who lost 10 kilograms of weight.

According to him, he did not feel any special pressure from the administration of the institution. “However, they aimed to make me a persistent violator of rules to have grounds to place me under police supervision afterwards,” he said. “They did that. They pinned the necessary number of violations on me, but they did not go all out. I cannot say I frequented disciplinary cells. I got there only once, for five days.”

Mr. Malchanaw noted that he viewed the imposed supervision as a method of controlling him. “If I start disturbing them, they will always have legal grounds to jail me,” he said.