KYIV, Ukraine (AP) – A wave of COVID-19 engulfed prisons in Belarus that are packed with people in custody for protesting the country’s authoritarian president, and some of the protesters who contracted the coronavirus while incarcerated accuse officials of neglecting or even encouraging infections.
Activists who spoke to the Associated Press after his release described overcrowded cells, without adequate ventilation or basic amenities and lack of medical treatment.
Kastus Lisetsky, 35, a musician who received a 15-day sentence for participating in a protest, said he was hospitalized with a high fever after eight days in a prison in eastern Belarus and was diagnosed with COVID-induced double-faced pneumonia. -19.
“Damp walls covered with parasites, the shocking lack of sanitary measures, the cold and a rusty bed – that’s what I got in prison in Mogilev instead of medical assistance,” 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 held in a Minsk prison and had to sleep on the floor of a cell intended for just two people. All four contracted the virus. Lisetsky is expected to return to prison to serve the remaining seven days of his sentence after he is released from the hospital.
He accused the government of allowing the virus to spread freely among prisoners for political reasons.
“The guards openly say that they do it deliberately in order,” said Lisetsky.
More than 30,000 people were detained for participating in protests against Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko’s August re-election in a vote that opposition activists and some election workers say was rigged to give Lukashenko a sixth term.
The police repeatedly stopped peaceful protests with batons and stunning grenades. The alleged electoral fraud and the brutal crackdown on demonstrations led 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 contesting the official results that gave Lukashenko 80% of the vote, urged foreign leaders and international organizations to intervene to help contain the coronavirus outbreak in Belarus. prisons.
“In central Europe, prisoners are being deliberately infected with the coronavirus,” Tsikhanouskaya told the Associated Press. “They move infected people from one cell to another, and the cells are overcrowded and unventilated. It is an atrocity, it can only be assessed as abuse and torture. “
Authorities have not released the number of prisoners with COVID-19, but human rights activists say that thousands of protesters tested positive after being arrested.
“The poor conditions of the Belarusian prison system contributed to an outbreak of COVID-19 in prisons, but the authorities have not even tried to improve the situation and have put thousands of activists on that track,” Valiantsin Stefanovic, vice president of the rights center Viasna said.
Artsiom Liava, a 44-year-old journalist, said he was infected last month while waiting for a hearing in a prison cell designed to accommodate 10, but which houses about 100 inmates. Liava was arrested while covering a protest in the Belarusian capital, Minsk, for the independent TV channel Belsat.
“First, the other prisoners and then I stopped smelling the prison,” he told the Associated Press. “We all had a fever, a strong cough and we were feeling weak, but they weren’t even giving us hot water.”
Liava said that after receiving a 15-day sentence, he was transferred to different jails and prisons in Minsk and nearby cities, while authorities struggled to house prisoners in overcrowded detention centers. He said he witnessed similar conditions in all of them – cellmates coughing or having trouble breathing and prison guards treating them with emphatic negligence.
“It was like a mockery, the doctors did not respond to appeals and complaints,” said Liava. “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, without any access to fresh air. “
The journalist said he did not receive a single dose of medicine during his stay behind bars. The day after he left prison, Liava said, he tested positive for COVID-19 and a CT scan showed that his lungs were severely affected.
“Prison doctors must be prosecuted for negligence. They put our lives in danger by refusing us to (basic) medical treatment, ”said Liava, who had a strong cough and was breathing hard when talking to the PA.
Belarus has reported more than 180,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus since the pandemic began, but many in the former Soviet republic of 9.4 million people suspect that authorities are manipulating statistics to hide the true scope of the outbreaks in the country.
Lukashenko chivalrously dismissed the coronavirus at the start of the pandemic, ignoring the national fears and blockages that the new virus caused as “psychosis” and advising citizens to avoid contracting it by driving tractors in the countryside, drinking vodka and visiting saunas. His attitude angered many Belarusians, increasing public dismay over his authoritarian style and helping to fuel post-election protests.
Ihar Hotsin, a doctor who worked at a major oncology hospital in Minsk, was arrested when he joined a rally of medical workers who opposed the crackdown on demonstrations. He said he and four of his fellow prisoners had contracted the virus in custody.
Hotsin, 30, believes he was infected in prison in the city of Baranovichi, where he was kept in a 12 square meter (129 square foot) cell along with about 80 other inmates.
“Five doctors at our hospital were arrested and all five tested positive for COVID-19 after being released, a rate of 100%,” said Hotsin. “We must shout out loud about an outbreak of COVID-19 in overcrowded prisons of political prisoners.”
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