After book release no letters come from Alienievich

• 15.04.2013, 13:07

In March a book “Going to Magadan” by a Belarusian political prisoner Ihar Alienievich came out in Russia.

In the book the author in a diary style narrative tells about the events in Belarus starting at the end of 2010, his arrest and captivity in KGB prison, Radio Svaboda reports.

The presentation of Ihar Alienievich’s book in Belarus is scheduled for 19 April. But as soon as media reported of the release of the book, letters home stopped coming from Alienievich, there are also no phone calls from him, the political prisoner’s mother Valancina Alienievich says:

“The authorities categorically do not want for the information about our penitentiary system to come out, for people to know the truth about what is going on. He managed to send his diaries, I cannot tell how, but he did. As the result there have been no news from him since 19 March. So it is not that simple to write the truth… But Ihar has courage. He understood everything well, he said “who if not me? If everyone is scared, then nothing will ever change”.

We would remind that on 27 May 2011 a judge of Minsk Zavadksi district’s court Zhana Khajnitskaja sentenced Ihar Alienievich to 8 years in high security penal colony. He is now serving the term of the punishment in the penal colony number 10 in Navapolatsk. He together with MIkalaj Dziadok and Aliaksandr Frantskevich were accused of organizing a procession near the building of the Defense Ministry, an attack on a Shangri La casino and a detention center in Akrescina street and also an arson of the doors of a Belarusbank’s branch office.