Dmitrii Bondarenko is being sent from hospital to prison today

Doctors insist that the political prisoner requires a minimum of half a year of rehabilitation.

Today the coordinator of the civil campaign “European Belarus”, Dmitrii Bondarenko, is to be discharged from No. 5 Hospital in Minsk, after a serious neurosurgical operation on his spine (excision of a double-sided herniated disc), and he is to be sent back to the prison of the Internal Affairs Ministry in Volodarskii Street.

The wife of the political prisoner, Olga Bondarenko, has informed the site charter97.org about this fact.

“I was calm when Dmitrii was in No. 5 Hospital; I was happy about every day of the rehabilitation, but now I am in despair again; I am very worried. Everyone around is saying only one thing: he needs serious, long rehabilitation. Now it is not yet known where Dmitrii will be sent. I hope that they will send him to a prison hospital, not to a cell. But after that he will be transferred to prison, all the same. And Dmitrii needs rehabilitation for half a year, at least. If he is not given that, the doctor said that he would suffer chronic pains, his right leg would not recover, and everything would be even worse,” Olga Bondarenko said.

Recently the political prisoner sent an application to the governor of the prison, with a request to change the punishment of imprisonment to a milder one, as he has served one third of his term. According to Bondarenko’s wife, he does not have much hope that the authorities will take such a decision, but he has the right to send such a petition under the law.

Olga Bondarenko quotes some passages from Dmitrii’s letter:

“I asked a doctor in exercise therapy to give me a set of exercises for rehabilitation in the upright position. She started to shout, “Upright position! You’re out of your mind! It must be done lying down for several months!” I said that in a week I could be sent to prison, and there I would be able to do exercises in the upright position only. She said, “Remember, only lying down; no exercises in the upright position.” I said, “It’s a prison” and so on. She became nervous: “You need serious gradual rehabilitation for half a year as a minimum!” It was nothing new. I am living one day at a time. Whatever happens, so it will have to be.”