“Too many lives cut short”: European diplomats put out a joint statement

On Raman Bandarenka’s death anniver­sary, the Ger­man Embassy in Min­sk issued a joint state­ment with sev­er­al diplo­mat­ic mis­sions.

Por­trait of Raman Ban­daren­ka out­side the Belaru­sian embassy in Vil­nius, Novem­ber 12, 2022

“On Novem­ber 12, 2020, Raman Ban­daren­ka died at the hands of the Belaru­sian regime. Almost four years lat­er, polit­i­cal pris­on­er Dmit­ry Shlet­gauer died in a Belaru­sian prison. Since 2020, sev­en polit­i­cal pris­on­ers have died behind bars. These deaths are a tragedy. We remem­ber these vic­tims and call for the imme­di­ate and uncon­di­tion­al release of all polit­i­cal pris­on­ers,” the state­ment said.

The ambas­sadors of Slo­va­kia, Poland, the Unit­ed King­dom, Lithua­nia, Latvia, Roma­nia, Swe­den, the Nether­lands, the Unit­ed States, Ger­many, Aus­tria, Bul­gar­ia, the Czech Repub­lic, and Ire­land signed the let­ter.

It is worth not­ing that among the deceased polit­i­cal pris­on­ers is Mikalai Klimovich, a blog­ger from Pin­sk who worked in the media.

Mikalai Klimovich. Cour­tesy pho­to

On Feb­ru­ary 28, 2023, the Pin­sk Dis­trict Court in Pin­sk sen­tenced a 61-year-old blog­ger to one year in prison for “insult­ing the Pres­i­dent of the Repub­lic of Belarus.” The pros­e­cu­tion was ini­ti­at­ed after the blog­ger post­ed a car­i­ca­ture of Ali­ak­san­dr Lukashen­ka on his social media page.

Despite Mikalai Klimovich hav­ing a sec­ond-degree dis­abil­i­ty due to heart dis­ease, Judge Andrei Bychy­la imposed this pun­ish­ment.

The blog­ger passed away at Cor­rec­tion­al Facil­i­ty No. 3 in ear­ly May 2023.