TALLINN, ESTONIA — A Belarusian artist who as soon as dumped manure outdoors an workplace of President Alexander Lukashenko has died in a jail, the place he was serving a five-year sentence, human rights activists and his spouse stated Tuesday.
Ales Pushkin, 57, died in a jail in Grodno in western Belarus of an unknown trigger, though he wasn’t recognized to be sick, in accordance with the Viasna human rights heart.
His spouse, Janina Demuch, instructed The Associated Press he “died in the intensive care unit of the prison under unclear circumstances.”
Belarusian authorities didn’t remark.
Pushkin was a political performer and cartoonist whose topic was typically Lukashenko, the nation’s authoritarian chief. The artist painted Lukashenko in hell, surrounded by riot police, on a fresco in a church within the Belarusian metropolis of Bobr.
In 1999, Pushkin was sentenced to 2 years for “Dung for the President,” by which he overturned a dung cart on the entrance to the presidential workplace in Minsk, the nation’s capital.
Pushkin was an lively participant in political opposition protests. In March 2021, he was arrested, then sentenced to 5 years in jail for inciting hatred and “desecration of state symbols.” Allegedly, at considered one of his exhibitions, Pushkin painted a Belarusian nationalist who collaborated with the Nazis throughout World War II. During the sentencing, Ales undressed in protest, for which he was positioned in solitary confinement for 13 days.
Belarus was gripped by large protests when Lukashenko was re-elected in August 2020 in balloting that some residents and Western officers thought-about fraudulent. Authorities responded with a brutal crackdown that resulted within the arrest of greater than 35,000 individuals, police beatings and the shutdown of many non-governmental organizations and impartial media shops.
According to Viasna, Belarus has jailed almost 1,500 political prisoners, together with Nobel Peace Prize winner Ales Bialiatski.
Exiled Belarusian opposition chief Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya stated she was “heartbroken” about Pushkin’s dying, and demanded an investigation.
“It is clear that Pushkin has become another tragic victim of the Lukashenko regime,” she stated. “Thousands of political prisoners are suffering in Belarusian prisons for taking part in pro-democracy protests, supporting Ukraine, or simply expressing their beliefs.”
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