During his three years in a Belarusian penal colony, human rights activist Leanid Sudalenka says he and other political prisoners were regularly deprived of family visits, phone calls and parcels. He nearly died when COVID-19 swept through the facility. And he was forced to spend the last nine days of his sentence in a damp punishment cell, sleeping on the concrete floor with a roll of toilet paper for a pillow.
He had to wear a yellow tag on his uniform — as do all the estimated 1,473 political prisoners held in Belarus — so they're easily identifiable to guards who he said routinely bullied, abused and humiliated them.
