Belarusian Kiryl Silivonchyk imprisoned in Russia for pro-Ukraine blogging
22 April 2015, 23:45
A Belarus national gets two years in colony in Russia for pro-Ukrainian posts in social networks.
The Belarusian is Kiryl Silivonchyk, 22. He was detained together with friends on December 18, 2014 and stood trial only on April 9, 2015.
The young man was a system administrator at a Nizhniy Novgorod plant. He did not write any political posts but simply copied posts from different communities like My Country– Belarus.
Silivonchyk was jailed for ‘public appeals for terrorism and justification of terrorism’. Moscow Circuit Court pronounced the decision. It is difficult to understand which of the posts on Silivonchyk’s page led to such a sentence.
It was reported that the Belarusian had been urging to give Crimea back to Ukraine and published the photo of some person tearing the Russian flag apart.
The young man’s relatives from Homel Province did not attend the trial and some Russian friends are bringing parcels for him now. Kiryl Silivonchyk is in Nizhniy Novgorod detention centre now. He is either waiting for an amnesty or for transportation to colony.
Silivonchyk’s page shows that he is a Belarusian patriot, loves Belarusian symbols, the language and is worried about its current state.
