Leanid Svetsik: I Received No Letters From Mikhail Zhamchuzhny For Three Months

The pressure on the political prisoner from the side of the administration of the colony #9 continues.

Human rights activist Leanid Svetsik, who constantly corresponds with political prisoner Mikhail Zhamchuzhny, told the website palitviazni.info that there had been no letters from him since June.

“Apparently, Mikhail is held in the punitive confinement all the time, so he has no opportunity to write letters to the outside,” the interlocutor says. “This situation seems very alarming as not everyone can handle such challenges.”

As previously informed by the human rights center “Viasna”, the pressure on the political prisoner from the side of the administration of the colony #9 continues. More disciplinary actions have been added to the previous ones: 10 days in the punitive confinement since June 31; 10 days of the same since August 10; and again 10 days since August 20.

Thus, the political prisoner remains in the punitive confinement almost without breaks. This is the 35th disciplinary action made against Mikhail Zhamchuzhny by the administration of the colony in Horki since August 2017.

“I got the last letter from Mikhail in June,” Leanid Svetsik says. “I sent letters to the colony each month, but there was no reply. Apparently, he is held in the piunitive confinement all the time, so he has no opportunitites to write letters to his friends at the outside. This situation seems very alarming as not everyone can handle such challenges. Zhamchuzhny is more than 60 years old, and this is really a scorn over an elderly person.”

According to the human rights activist, Zhamchuzhny hardly ever complains about his health condition in the letters, but this doesn’t mean everything is good in this regard.

“Mikhail just doesn’t want to seem weak, that is why he never complains,” Leanid Svetsik believes. “However, he hardly ever goes out of the punitive confinement, can you imagine what it’s like? Not every young person would have endured this, and Mikhail Zhamchuzhny is a pensioner. What kind of an organism would cope with all this? And for how long? In one of the letters, Mikhail joked that, in the cell-type premises, he feels like in some health resort, compared to the punitive confinement. As they say, it would be funny if it wasn’t so sad.”

Founder of the “Platform Innovation” Mikhail Zhamchuzhny was sentenced to 6 years of imprisonment in a reinforced-security penal colony by the Vitsebsk regional court in July 2015. On October 23, the judicial collegium for criminal proceedings of the Supreme Court considered the cassational appeal and punished Zhamchuzhny even more severely – 6,5 years of imprisonment.

Human rights defenders recognize Mikhail Zhamchuzhny as a political prisoner.