Jailed activist moves to renounce citizenship in protest against torture

May 26, BPN. Jailed activist Palina Šarenda-Panasiuk, 48, has filed an official request to renounce her citizenship in protest against torture, her husband Andrej Šarenda has said on Facebook.

Šarenda said his wife was transferred from a penal colony in Zarečča, in the Homiel region, to an unknown medical facility for psychiatric examination.

During her stay in the colony, the mother of two minor sons spent a total of 200 days in a punishment cell, including 120 days in the last five months, he said.

“And that doesn’t count the months she spent in the internal prison, where the conditions are not much better than in the punishment cell,” he added.

“Palina is being killed slowly but deliberately,” Šarenda said. “Her body is so exhausted that she cannot even walk anymore. Palina’s eyesight is severely impaired because of the lack of sunlight.”

In June 2021, a court in Brest sentenced Šarenda-Panasiuk, a European Belarus campaigner, to two years’ imprisonment for a scuffle with a police officer during a raid on her home, and for allegedly insulting police and the head of state. Ten months later, a court in Homiel sentenced her to an additional year for defying police orders.

Andrej Šarenda fled the country to avoid criminal prosecution. The sons first stayed with a grandmother in Belarus, then were reunited with their father abroad.

Human rights defenders denounced Palina Šarenda-Panasiuk’s persecution as politically motivated.