Yury Kavaliou
assigned coercive mental treatment
Prisoner
Date of birth: 7 May 1973
Date of detention: 23 July 2021
Charges indicted:
- Art. 368 of the Criminal Code — Insulting the President of the Republic of Belarus
- Art. 411 — Malicious disobedience to the demands of administration of the correctional institution
Penalty: compulsory psychiatric treatment
Judge: Mikalai Talashka
Prison: Scientific And Practical Center For Mental Health
Notes: Health issues
Statement on the status of a political prisoner
Godparent: Sigurd Agersnap, Member of the Danish Parliament
Yury Kavaliou was sentenced to one year in a general-security penal colony by the court of the Buda-Kašaliova district.
Kavaliou was found guilty under Article 368 of the Criminal Code for publicly insulting Aliaksandr Lukashenka during an appointment with the doctor at a hospital in Čačersk.
On June 28, 2022, three days before the political prisoner's release from the penal colony, the Vaŭkavysk District Court convicted him under Article 411 of the Criminal Code of malicious disobedience to the demands of the administration of the penitentiary. The case was considered by Judge Mikalai Talashka. No details of the session are available. Yet the relatives of the political prisoner were told in court that he was assigned coercive psychiatric treatment.
Yury served his sentence in full and was released from prison on July 1, 2022. Now he faces coercive treatment ordered in a new criminal case.
In early August 2022, it became known that Yury Kavaliou is in the Republican Scientific and Practical Center of Mental Health in Minsk under coercive mental treatment by court order.
