Sergey Skrebets is Released on November 15, 2006

(Aleksandr Kazulin is 4 Weeks on Hunger Strike Already)

On November 15, 2006 Sergey Skrebets, a political prisoner, has been released after a year and a half of imprisonment. The former deputy and an active oppositionist was charged with and sentenced to 2.5 years in a minimum-security correctional labour facility. In October Skrebets was suddenly amnestied and his term of imprisonment reduced by one year.

Human rights activists consider the verdict to the former deputy to be politically motivated. In summer 2004 he took part in the hunger strike of the "Respublika" deputies, who demanded democratization of the Electoral Code, and release political prisoners. He also was an organiser of a protest action timed to the end of a 10-year Lukashenko's rule in July 2004.

The former deputy connects his release with a hunger strike of solidarity with demands of the political prisoner Aleksandr Kazulin, who insists on consideration of situation in Belarus in the UN Security Council. As said by Skrebets, the state of health of Aleksandr Kazulin has considerably declined after four weeks of hunger strike. "Kazulin is very exhausted physically. It is serious to lose 17 kilograms with his height. I do not trust prison doctors, they wouldn't be able to help him to transit from a hunger strike. Their methods are to put a tube into one's mouth and feed forcibly. One of doctors threatened to do so to me, and boasted to have done that many times before. These are methods of a fascist concentration camp. A period after a hunger strike is a very difficult process, knowledge is needed. Any wrong decision can lead to a lethal outcome. I have serous concern over Kazulin's life. But he is not going to stop the hunger strike, he sees no reasons for that," Sergey Skrebets said in an interview to the Chater'97 Press-Center.