Two journalists are on hunger strike against illegal detention in Mahiliou prison

Uladz­imir Lapt­se­vich who works with local and for­eign media, was sen­tenced to 12 days of jail by judge Vic­to­ria Pali­ako­va. Chief edi­tor of the 6tv.by por­tal Zmitser Salauy­ou was sen­tenced to 8 days of jail.

The prison admin­is­tra­tion does not let the fam­i­ly pass books or warm clothes to Lapt­se­vich.

He is on hunger strike from August 6. His wife Natalia has not been able to receive infor­ma­tion about the state of his health. Natalia reg­u­lar­ly brings water to the facil­i­ty to sup­port her hus­band who is on hunger strike.

Hun­dreds of peo­ple queue­ing for hours hop­ing to pass parcels to their loved ones in jail make it very dif­fi­cult at the moment. Only 4 to 6 peo­ple can do that in an hour. Natalia says, it took the jail admin­is­tra­tion about 35 min­utes to process her first par­cel of four items.

They refused to take books, paper and pens, as well as warm cloth­ing.

Lapt­se­vich was detained on August 5, when he, as a mem­ber of BAJ legal ser­vice came to the Lenin­s­ki dis­trict police depart­ment of Mahil­iou to find out about the fate of our col­league Alexan­der Burak­ou and human rights activist Alexan­der Ham­ratau.

At the tri­al on August 7 the jour­nal­ist said he had been beat­en by police.

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Zmitser Salauy­ou was detained on August 8 by traf­fic police. They claimed he drove a stolen car. The police offi­cers of Lenin­s­ki police depart­ment charged him with dis­obey­ing the law enforce­ment offi­cers.