USA to renew sanctions against Belarusian enterprises; political prisoners in a Mahiliou penal colony are colour-marked; Polish School in Brest to be closed
19 April 2021 | Voice of Belarus
Source: t.me/nashaniva
The US renews sanctions against Belneftekhim and eight other Belarusian state-owned enterprises
Today, on 19 April, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya was paid a visit by the US Ambassador Julie Fisher. Fisher told Tsikhanouskaya that the US Treasury Department was renewing sanctions against nine Belarusian state-owned enterprises. Any cooperation with these enterprises must be stopped in 45 days.
The sanctions are imposed due to the systematic violation of human rights in Belarus. Previously, the sanctions were lifted. But in March 2021, the United States announced that the sanctions would be reimposed, yet the regime could have avoided them by freeing political prisoners and starting a dialogue with the people. In response, Lukashenko’s regime stated that there were no political prisoners in Belarus.
Political prisoners in a Mahiliou penal colony are colour-marked
In detention facilities, tags with names and terms of imprisonment are sewn onto prisoners’ clothes. The tag is usually white. The relatives of prisoners from a penal colony in Mahiliou report that in that facility the political prisoners are “marked” in red. This is done to make a “special” prisoner visible to the colony staff and other convicts.
Since the beginning of August, numerous cases of using different colours in order to mark the arrested protesters have become public knowledge. Depending on the colour the police uses, an arrested person could be subjected to a specific kind of torture.
Previously, the individuals serving sentences for drug-related crimes in Belarusian prisons were marked this way. The UN recognised this practice as discriminatory.
Polish School in Brest to be closed
The attacks on the Polish minority in Belarus continue. Today, the court of the Brest region made a decision to close down the Polish School. The lawsuit was filed by the Brest Prosecutor’s Office “in order to protect the state and public interests”.
At the end of February 2021, the school hosted an event dedicated to the “Cursed Soldiers” Day with the participation of the Polish Consul in Brest Jerzy Timofiejuk. The event provoked a diplomatic scandal between Minsk and Warsaw. School director Hanna Panishava landed in jail. She is accused of “inciting hatred and rehabilitating Nazism”. Like the other defendants in the “case of the Union of Poles”, Panishava faces up to 12 years in prison. Human rights activists recognised her as a political prisoner.
New sentences for Belarusian protesters
Three residents of Mahiliou received from 3 to 3.5 years in prison for hanging out dolls with the faces of public servants. They were found guilty of hooliganism and insulting the president.
A resident of the Minsk region was sentenced to 2 years behind bars for publicly insulting Lukashenko in a comment on the VKontakte social network.
The court in Hrodna recognised the Telegram channel “Grodno 97%” as extremist.
