Former political prisoner Ihar Losik has spoken about the health condition of political prisoner and Tor Band musician Yauhen Burlo, who was sentenced to eight years in prison and is serving his term at Penal Colony No. 3 in Vitsba. According to Losik, Burlo still moves only with the help of crutches and requires surgery on his second leg. Losik said Burlo was offered to write a pardon request but was not released.
“Yauhen Burlo, a Tor Band musician, is held in Vitsyebsk. He can move only on crutches. He has osteoporosis in both legs. An operation was performed on his right leg, and he went through months of suffering, because you understand how surgery and rehabilitation take place in prison conditions. He told me it was hell. An urgent operation is needed on the second leg. He cannot walk normally, and just imagine what it is like to live in this condition in a camp. For some reason, he was kept for six months in the KGB pre-trial detention centre. Exactly a year ago, they told him to write a pardon request, but then took him back to the camp and did not release him,” Losik wrote on his Facebook blog.
Losik also shared his own experience of receiving medical assistance in detention.
“Three times in the punishment cell I lost consciousness from the cold and fell headfirst onto the tiles. Only the first time after that did they measure my blood pressure; afterwards they simply pretended that nothing had happened. In the KGB detention centre there were ‘railway partisans’ with knees shot during arrest,” he said.
It should be recalled that the Rahachou-based band Tor Band released several songs on current issues in 2020, including a music video in memory of Raman Bandarenka. In October 2022, the band’s musicians were detained and criminal cases were opened against them. The group was declared an extremist formation, and its songs were classified as extremist materials.
In late October 2023, the Homyel Regional Court handed down sentences to the musicians: Dzmitry Halavach received nine years in a high-security colony, Yauhen Burlo eight years, and Andrei Yaremchyk seven and a half years in prison. They were convicted of inciting hatred, creating or participating in an extremist formation, discrediting the Republic of Belarus, and insulting Lukashenka.
