Belarusian activist Palina Šarendová-Panasjuková, who was recently released from prison and then managed to escape to Lithuania, said on Monday that she was abused and forced to undergo repressive psychiatric treatment.
In the Belarusian prison, she served for more than four years for opposing President Alexander Lukashenko during mass protests in 2020. TASR reports according to AFP.
She saw a psychiatrist’s message about her status
Šarendová-Panasjuková originally worked in Brest in the west of Belarus. It is one of the most famous Belarusian prisoners who have been released in the last few months, and its testimony is, according to AFP, a rare testimony from within the infamous Belarusian prison system.
“I was hospitalized in psychiatry … The tradition of repressive psychiatry has not disappeared. I saw a psychiatrist’s administration in prison, he said: ‘He is called a political prisoner, a diagnosis: paranoid personality disorder’, ‘said 49-year-old activist at a press conference in Lithuanian capital Vilnius.
She claims that during her imprisonment she spent more than 270 days in isolation or cells to serve a sentence that compared to the “cellars” of the Soviet secret service of the NKVD. She further described the punishment cells as a room where she never ventilates and where women sleep on bare coats. “It’s a constant moral terror. Open toilet. The light shines for 24 hours. It is very cold, ”she explained.
As she escaped from her homeland she did not want to reveal
Dozens of other political prisoners, who were pardoned over the past half of the year, were forced to cooperate with the Belarusian secret service of the KGB. “A certain practice has been created in the release of political prisoners. Man is tortured, tortured, tortured and in one moment they go to write a request for pardon, ”she said, adding that she wrote the request herself for concerns that she would never get out of prison and will not see her children. According to her, the prisoners are forced to beg for mercy in front of the camera and to “break and discredit”, forcing him to sign a confidential documentary on cooperation with KGB. She, too, signed the papers, now she is distanced from them.
Šarendová-Panasjuková is one of the more than 3700 people who have been imprisoned in Belarus, according to the human rights organization Viasna, for opposing the regime over the past five years. The activist refused to disclose details of how she fled from her homeland, where she was under police supervision and could not leave lawfully. In Lithuania, she joined her two sons and her husband who have lived there since her imprisonment.
