Narodnaya Volya journalist jailed for 30 days

On May 14 the jour­nal­ist was cov­er­ing the tri­al on the «stu­dents’ case» for Nar­o­d­naya Volya. Then the police detained sev­er­al peo­ple near the court build­ing, includ­ing TUT.BY reporter Liubou Kaspi­arovich. Kaspi­arovich was charged with par­tic­i­pa­tion in an unsanc­tioned ral­ly and sen­tenced to 15 days of jail. She has just served her sen­tence and was released on Sat­ur­day, May 29.

Ms Kasper­ovich shared some details about the con­di­tions at Akrestsi­na cen­ter:

— We were not giv­en bed linen and had no oppor­tu­ni­ty to take a show­er. We could see that the peo­ple in the cell across the cor­ri­dor had bed linen. We could see their slip­pers and bed­spreads through the food hatch. We had to sleep on bare bed frames. It was more com­fort­able to sleep on the floor. The only walk­ing was three to four thou­sand steps in the cell until one gets tired of count­ing. We used wet wipes and a bot­tle of water instead of show­er­ing.

Lubou got her two parcels with food and warm clothes only when she was leav­ing the jail. The clothes that she was detained in and a pack of masks her col­leagues man­aged to get to her while she was still at the police sta­tion were the only things that she had dur­ing her 15 days in jail. Oth­er clothes and hygiene prod­ucts, includ­ing a tooth­brush, were nev­er giv­en to her by the jail admin­is­tra­tion. Lubou explains, she could not sleep nor­mal­ly dur­ing her whole term in jail:

— It was dif­fi­cult to fall asleep, it was cold, and we lay on the floor. In addi­tion, the per­son­nel had a spe­cial pol­i­cy towards the so-called “polit­i­cal” cells — they woke us up at 2 and 4 a.m., each night. They call out everyone’s names, and we had to respond, or to get up.

Hlafi­ra Zhuk was arrest­ed the day Kaspi­arovich walked free.

Today she turns 20 years old.  She got the 30-day jail sen­tence right on her birth­day. Hlafi­ra has been at Akrestsi­na deten­tion cen­ter since Sat­ur­day.