KYIV, Ukraine (AP) – A wave of COVID-19 has engulfed prisons in Belarus that are full of people arrested for protesting against the nation’s authoritarian president and some of the protesters who contracted the coronavirus while imprisoned accusing authorities of neglecting or even favoring infections.
Activists who spoke to The Associated Press after his release described massively crowded cells without adequate ventilation or basic amenities and lack of medical treatment.
Kastus Lisetsky, 35, a musician who received a 15-day sentence for attending a protest, said he was hospitalized with a high fever after eight days in a prison in eastern Belarus and was diagnosed COVID-19-induced double-sided pneumonia.
“Wet walls covered with parasites, the shocking lack of sanitary measures, a shivering cold and a rusty bed – that’s what I got in Mogilev prison instead of medical care,” Lisetsky told the AP in a telephone interview. “I had a fever and lost consciousness and the guards had to call an ambulance.”
Lisetsky said that before entering the prison, he and three bandmates were detained in a Minsk prison and had to sleep on the floor of a cell intended for only two people. All four have contracted the virus. Lisetsky must return to prison to serve the remaining seven days of his sentence after being discharged from hospital.
He accused the government of allowing the virus to spread among those imprisoned for political reasons.
“The guards openly say they do it deliberately in order,” Lisetsky said.
More than 30,000 people have been arrested for taking part in protests against the August re-election of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko in a vote that opposition activists and some election workers say was prepared to give Lukashenko a sixth term.
Police have repeatedly broken peaceful protests with clubs and stun grenades. The alleged voting scheme and the brutal repression of the demonstrations have motivated the United States and the European Union to introduce sanctions against Belarusian officials.
Opposition candidate Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who came in second in the presidential election and was forced to leave the country after challenging the official results that gave Lukashenko 80 percent of the vote, urged leaders foreign and international organizations to intervene to help curb the outbreak of coronavirus in Belarus. prisons.
“In central Europe, inmates are deliberately infected with coronavirus,” Tsikhanouskaya told The Associated Press. “Infected people move from one cell to another and the cells are overcrowded and have no ventilation. It is an atrocity, it can only be evaluated as abuse and torture.
Authorities have not released the number of prisoners with COVID-19, but rights activists say thousands of protesters tested positive after being arrested.
“The horrific state of the Belarusian prison system has contributed to an outbreak of COVID-19 in prisons, but the authorities have not even tried to improve the situation and put thousands of activists on this carrier,” Valiantsin Stefanovic said. , vice president of said Viasna rights center.
Artsiom Liava, a 44-year-old journalist, said he became infected last month while awaiting a court hearing in a prison cell intended to house ten, but to house about 100 inmates. Liava was arrested while covering a protest in the Belarusian capital, Minsk, by the independent television channel Belsat.
“First, the fellow inmates and then I stopped feeling the stench of prison,” he told The Associated Press. “We all had a fever, a strong cough and felt weak, but they didn’t even give us hot water.”
Liava said that after receiving a 15-day sentence, he was transferred to various prisons and prisons in Minsk and nearby cities as authorities struggled to house inmates in crowded detention centers. He said he witnessed similar conditions in all of them: cellmates were coughing or having difficulty breathing and prison counselors treated them with emphatic negligence.
“It was like a mockery, the doctors were not responding to requests and complaints,” Liava said. “It was forbidden to lie down during the day and the mattresses were folded. We all felt exhausted, but we were forced to sit on iron beds in the basement with no access to fresh air. “
The journalist said he did not receive a single dose of medicine during his behind-the-scenes stage. The day after he was released from prison, Liava said he tested positive for COVID-19 and a computed tomography showed that his lungs were badly affected.
“Prison doctors should be prosecuted for negligence. They put our lives in danger by refusing us (basic) medical treatment, ”said Liava, who had a strong cough and was breathing hard while talking to the AP.
Belarus has reported more than 180,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus since the start of the pandemic, but many in the former Soviet republic, with 9.4 million people, suspect authorities are manipulating statistics to hide the true scope of the pandemic. outbreaks of the country.
Lukashenko fired the coronavirus early in the pandemic, setting aside fear and national blockades the new mistake had caused as “psychosis” and advising citizens to avoid getting caught driving tractors into the countryside, drinking vodka and visiting saunas. His attitude has angered many Belarusians, which has increased public dismay at his authoritarian style and helped fuel post-election protests.
Ihar Hotsin, a doctor who worked at a top oncology hospital in Minsk, was arrested when he joined a rally of medical workers who opposed the crackdown on protests. He said he and four of his comrades who were arrested contracted the virus in custody.
Hotsin, 30, is believed to have been infected in the Baranovichi city prison, where he was held in a 12-square-meter (129-square-foot) cell along with about 80 other inmates.
“Five doctors from our hospital were arrested and all five tested positive for COVID-19 after being released, a rate of 100%,” Hotsin said. “We have to cry out loud about an outbreak of COVID-19 in prisons full of political prisoners.”
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