The parents of RFE/RL journalist Ihar Losik, who is serving 15 years term on charges that he, RFE/RL, and foreign governments have called politically motivated, say their son has been held incommunicado in a Belarusian prison for a full year.
Losik's parents say the last time they received a letter from their son, who was placed in a cell-type premises (PKT) where letters, parcels from relatives, and visitations are banned, was on February 20, 2023.
The 31-year-old was arrested in June 2020 and sentenced to 15 years in prison in December 2021 on several charges, including organizing mass riots, incitement to social hatred, and several other charges that remain unclear. He has maintained his innocence and calls all charges against him politically motivated.
Losik and some 150 other Belarusian political prisoners, including another RFE/RL journalist, Andrey Kuznechyk, and former would-be presidential candidate Viktar Babaryka, are serving their terms in the same correctional colony No. 1 in the northern city of Navapolatsk.
Correctional colony No. 1 is known as one of the most restricted and notorious penitentiaries in the country.
SEE ALSO: Court Rejects RFE/RL Journalist Kurmasheva's Request For House ArrestInitially, the territory of the colony was occupied by a number of temporary houses built for workers at a then newly built oil refinery in 1958.
The territory was later turned into correctional colony No. 10, where mostly members of organized criminal groups, noted crime kingpins, and so-called thieves-in-law served their terms.
Belarusian authorities started sending political prisoners to the correctional colony in 2010, In 2017, the penitentiary changed its name to correctional colony No. 1.
In October last year, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has found Belarus violated international human rights law by imprisoning Losik, concluding that his arrest and detention were "based solely on his journalistic activity and his exercise of the freedoms of expression and of association.”
The U.S.-based rights group Freedom Now said at the time that the conclusion was made in response to a legal petition it filed along with the international law firm Dechert LLP.
SEE ALSO: 'Robbed Of Childhood': The Children Of Belarus's Political Prisoners Left Behind In Lukashenka's CrackdownThe husband of exiled Belarusian opposition leader Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya, Syarhey Tsikhanouski, as well as four other bloggers and opposition politicians and activists, were sentenced to lengthy prison terms along with Losik at the time.
In January 2023, Losik's wife, Darya Losik, was sentenced to two years in prison on a charge of facilitating extremist activity. The charge stemmed from her interview with the Poland-based Belsat television channel that has been officially labeled as an extremist group by Minsk.
The couple's 4-year-old daughter, Paulina, is currently in the custody of Darya Losik's parents.
The U.S. State Department, U.S. Helsinki Commission, Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, the U.S. Agency for Global Media, several U.S. and EU politicians have called several times for Losik’s immediate release.