Mikalai Autuhovich: People are ready to execute any order, even to kill

A 51-year old businessman, a veteran of the Afghan war, and civil activist from Vaukavysk, has been released from Hrodna prison on April 8.

Mikalai Autuhovich spent more than 5 years in prison and was released from Hrodna prison on April 8.

Talking with the journalists, he said that the most frightening in prison is that “people agree to do anything they are ordered. They are even ready to kill another man, few would refuse.”

When serving his term, the ex-political prisoner started learning the Belarusian language: ‘Maybe I have not learnt it yet but I set my sights on it. Why did I decide for learning the language? I am monitoring the events in the country and see people’s aspirations. I also want it to be our language’.

Mikalai Autuhovich intends to be engaged in public activity, Belsat quotes his words. ‘They prevent me from doing anything else. It’s impossible to do business: one should swindle to get income; it is impossible to earn money honestly [in Belarus]. I am going to be engaged in public activity. If it is closely linked with politics one becomes a politician. In Belarus everything which runs counter the authorities is associated with politics,’ he said.

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Autuhovich was arrested on February 8, 2009. In May, 2010 the Supreme Court of Belarus sentenced the former entrepreneur to five years and two months of imprisonment in a medium security penal colony under the Criminal Code's Article 295, which penalizes the illegal handling of arms, ammunition and explosives, because of five hunting rifle cartridges found in his safe. Human rights defenders note that the sentence might well have been awarded in retaliation for Mikalai Autuhovich’s fighting against public corruption in the region.

The political prisoner was repeatedly asked to address a petition for pardon to President Aliaksandr Lukashenka, but he turned the proposal down.

While serving his term Mikalai Autuhovich has been subjected to disciplinary action more than ten times. After attempting suicide in December, 2011 he wrote to his family: “I am not a person who enjoys such living as it was in 1937. I had to defend my honor to be a man, not an animal. But I did not have another way out because they had not heard and understood anything. I am asking you again – please, don’t worry, I am strong, I will survive even if I am alone versus the evil ”.

In September 2013 Mikalai Autuhovich cut his stomach with a razor protesting against the prison administration’s illegal actions and abusive treatment. The reason for such a desperate move might have become his being reprimanded for … ‘the absence on his bunk on August 26, 2013’.