Pavel Seviarynets: That’s Some Stalinism

The guards at the Akrestsin Street detention center took away the manuscript belonging to the writer-politician.

Co-chairman of the steering committee of the Belarusian Christian Democracy party Pavel Seviarynets has sent to the Prosecutor General the statement on confiscation of the manuscript from the second book of his novel "Belarusalim", Radio Racyja reports.

The manuscript containing 11 pages was seized from him at the Akrestsin Street detention center, where he was serving 10 days of administrative arrest for defending Kurapaty.

- 11 pages, handwritten with a green pen, were taken from me during one of the checks. After I wrote a letter to the head of the detention center demanding they should return the manuscript to me, the guards of the shift on the next day scattered paper from my personal belongings across the cell, and trampled on it. The novel "Belarusalim" was mostly written in prison, and nowhere - neither in the valadarka prison, nor in the KGB prison, nor in the detention centers or specialized forcible labor facilities across Belarus they have ever seized manuscripts. This is some sort of Stalinism - to take a manuscript from a writer.

As noted by Pavel Seviarynets, all regulatory documents envisage that employees of the detention center cannot seize inmates’ personal records - it is their property.

"Moreover, since I am a writer, this is what I do for living," - said co-chairman of the BCD. He is going to inform the widest possible circles of the Belarusian and international public about the seized manuscripts and other abuse while serving his sentence. Pavel Seviarynets demands to return his manuscript and to punish those responsible for the violation of his rights.