Belarus: Little mercy for sick or disabled prisoners

Since 2021, five political prisoners have died in Belarusian prisons. Rights activists say the cause of death is inhumane treatment that saw people denied immediate, high-quality medical care: Three of them were already battling serious health issues before their incarceration.

Under Belarusian laws, authorities should heed the health conditions of detainees. According to data from country's judiciary, back in 2010, 10% of complainants seeking release from prison were successful. By 2021, that proportion had fallen to 1.3%.

Today, handicapped, pregnant and elderly people, as well as those with diabetes, cancer and other diseases are held in pre-trial detention.

According to Vasily Savadsky, the former head of the medical service at the Department of Corrections of the Belarusian Ministry of the Interior, investigators often exploit the state of health of a defendant in order to force "useful" statements out of them. If the person concerned does not sign certain papers, they are threatened with deterioration in their state of health, he said.

Stretchered into a hearing

In Belarus, virtually all people who are politically persecuted are placed in pre-trial detention, a former Belarusian lawyer who requested anonymity explained, offering an example.

"A client who was being persecuted for political reasons needed an operation. He couldn't sleep due to pain and was still taken into custody on remand although the conditions of detention should not threaten one's life or health," the source said.

"The investigator said ‘I'm not a doctor.' And the doctors pointed to the investigator because he was the one who made the decision to put the person in solitary confinement," they continued. The unnamed lawyer said that it was very difficult to carry out the operation, and that afterwards, there were complications.

"The client was brought to the hearing on a stretcher. He was questioned while lying on the floor and was also filmed. However, the investigator saw nothing unusual in this, although it was clearly inhumane treatment."

Pavel Sapelko, another lawyer from the Belarusian human rights organization Viasna, said that torture is systematically used against political prisoners in Belarus, regardless of disability or serious illness. According to Sapelko, this has led to the death of five political prisoners in custody.

Tough sentences, politically motivated

Another Belarusian ex-lawyer, who also asked to remain anonymous, said the Belarusian judiciary aims to isolate a convicted person rather than to re-socialise them.

A person with no previous convictions who has committed a minor offence often receives a harsh sentence straight away, according to the source, and courts often simply ignore mitigating circumstances such as serious illness or even disability.

For political prisoners, the source continued, there are orders to impose even harsher sentences. The lawyer cites the example of Nikolai Klimovich, who had a disability but was sentenced to a year in prison because he had "liked" a post with caricature showing the Belarusian ruler Alexander Lukashenko.

The defendant himself and his lawyer had affirmed during the trial that a prison sentence would not be possible for health reasons. Klimovich died in prison two months later, in May 2023.

Can you get released on medical grounds?

Theoretically, release from prison due to medical reasons is possible. There is a list of illnesses that make the cut, including tuberculosis, cancer or diabetes, former medical service head Savadsky explains. First a special committee must meet and come to a decision, then it is up to a court to decide.

That court has the right to authorize release on medical grounds, but is not obliged to. There are no guarantees, according to Savadsky, even if doctors assess that incarceration is life threatening.

In reality, according to the medic, affected prisoners are only very rarely freed, for example if they are in the advanced stages of cancer and are sent home to die.

Even under extreme circumstances, not everyone manages to make it out of prison. Like Yelena Melnikova, a former judge who died in 2018 in a prison. She had been sentenced to 13 years in jail in 2016 for accepting bribes. Melnikova was supposed to be taken to an oncology clinic for treatment, but died the day before her release.

The Supreme Court of Belarus does not provide data on how many people are released from prison on medical grounds.

This article was originally written in Russian.