Artist and political prisoner Ales Pushkin dies in Belarus
Artist Ales Pushkin, sentenced to five years in prison in Belarus, died in intensive care under “unexplained circumstances”, his wife Yanina Demukh said on her Facebook page on Tuesday, June 11. Information about Pushkin’s death was confirmed in the publication Mediazona in Grodno Prison No. 1, where he was kept.
In prison they advised me to go to the emergency hospital. According to the number of the chief physician’s receptionist, “Mediazone” refused to name the place of death of the artist. The edition “Nasha Niva” in prison was told that the artist was in the intensive care unit of the hospital under escort.
Pushkin was sentenced to 5 years in prison
Ales Pushkin is a Belarusian non-conformist painter, theater artist, performer and art curator. He was arrested in March 2021. A year later, Pushkin was sentenced to 5 years in prison on charges of desecrating state symbols (Article 370 of the Criminal Code) and incitement to hatred (Article 130, Part 3 of the Criminal Code). .
The reason for the criminal case was the placement of a portrait of an anti-Soviet underground figure Yevgeny Zhikhar on an exhibition in Grodno’s “City Life Center”, which the investigation interpreted as “rehabilitation of Nazism”. At the same time, the picture was painted in 2014 and has already been exhibited in Belarus and Russia.
Pushkin’s most famous performance is Pus for the President. In July 1999, the artist rolled a wheelbarrow with manure to the presidential administration in Minsk. He scattered manure and devalued rubles, put the constitution, Lukashenka’s portrait on top and pierced everything with a pitchfork. For this action, the artist was also sentenced to two years of probation.
Tikhanovskaya: Responsibility for the death of Ales Pushkin lies with the Lukashenka regime
The Human Rights Center “Viasna”, the Belarusian Committee of Helsinki, the Legal Initiative of Belarus and other human rights organizations recognize Pushkin as a political prisoner.
“Belarus has lost one of its most talented and fearless sons. Ales Pushkin was the embodiment of the indomitable spirit of the Belarusian people. He died as a political prisoner of the regime, and the responsibility for that lies with his jailer, Lukashenka and his henchmen,” wrote the leader of the Belarusian democratic forces, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya.
Source: DW
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