BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS
DATE:
26/02/2008
Belarus prisoner threatens to step up hunger strike
By Andrei Makhovsky
MINSK (Reuters) - Belarus's most prominent detainee, Alexander Kozulin, threatened on Monday to step up a hunger strike by refusing liquids unless authorities granted him permission to attend his wife's funeral.
Kozulin, 52, who was jailed for 5-1/2 years in 2006 after helping organize protests over President Alexander Lukashenko's re-election, began his hunger strike on Sunday.
His two daughters said they had launched their own hunger strike on Monday, as had the family lawyer.
Kozulin's wife Irina, 48, died of cancer on Saturday. Plans for the funeral have been put on hold.
"If I am not granted a release as of February 26, I will begin refusing liquids," Kozulin said in a statement issued by friends and relatives. "Within six or seven days, I will then be buried along with my wife."
Kozulin, an academic, is one of two remaining detainees described as political prisoners by the West, which says they must be freed to improve ties with Belarus, a state of 10 million wedged between Russia and three European Union states.
The West accuses the ex-Soviet state of human rights abuses.
About 400 people carrying candles and portraits of Kozulin and his wife gathered Monday evening in central October Square to press for Kozulin's release to attend the funeral.
"We are appealing to authorities to allow us to bury our mother and save our father," Yulia Kozulina, one of his two daughters, told the gathering amid a downpour.
Police stood on the edge of the square and announced through loudspeakers that the rally was illegal, but took no action.
EU DEMANDS KOZULIN'S RELEASE
The EU and United States on Monday repeated calls for Kozulin's release.
"I hope and I would appreciate this as an important signal, that the Belarus authorities will let Mr Kozulin attend tomorrow's funeral in Minsk," EU external Affairs Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner said in a statement.
"Putting an end to the practice of detaining citizens on political grounds in Belarus would be a significant step on the Belarussian side."
That sentiment was echoed in Washington by White House spokeswoman Dana Perino and she also extended U.S. President George W. Bush's condolences to Kozulin and his family.
"The United States deplores the Belarussian regime's incomprehensible refusal to release political prisoner (Alexander) Kozulin during the days leading up to and following the death of his wife," Perino said. "We reiterate our call for Mr. Kozulin's immediate release."
Authorities have made no comment on Kozulin's release, but family lawyer Igor Rynkevych said the prison holding Kozulin had given indications it would refuse his leave "on grounds that he committed disciplinary offenses while in detention."
He, Kozulin's two daughters, Yulia and Olga, and political ally Sergei Skrebets, had started "an indefinite hunger strike until Kozulin is released."
Lukashenko is barred from entering the United States and the EU on grounds he rigged his re-election.
Kozulin was jailed after urging protesters at a rally denouncing the president's re-election to march to a prison where some activists were being held. He staged a 53-day hunger strike to draw attention to human rights violations in Belarus.
(Additional reporting by David Brunnstrom in Brussels and Jeremy Pelofsky in Washington; Writing by Ron Popeski; Editing by Richard Balmforth)
Source:
http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSL2587287620080226
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