Kozulin's daughters meet ex-presidential contender in prison

After tasting a fresh vegetable salad, Alexander Kozulin says he has even forgotten that such food could exist. The daughters of the former presidential contender spend three days in a company of their father during a long-term appointment in a correction colony in the northern Belarus.

The European Radio for Belarus talks with the young daughter, Volha. She said that they were heavily searched before they entered the colony. But this did not prevent them from bringing several delecacies to their father.

According to Volha, his father Alexander does not have many people to talk to or to play tennis. But he tries to work out and do some aerobics.

How does your father feel now?


He is very confident as regards his morale and internal strength. He is very calm and 100 percent sure that everything will be fine. But his health condition is not very good. He always feels fatigue and dizzyness. He is tryin to restore his physical health, but it is still hard...

What about his weght? Has he eventually managed to regain weight after the hunger strike?

His current weght is 85 kg. When he waqs arrested, his weight was about 105 kg. But we think it is ok for his height of 1.88 meters.

According to Volha, Kozulin is permanently exposed to moral pressure. Before they could enter, all their cakes were cut into pieces.

When we came for the appointment, we were searched completely. They cut all our cakse that we cooked into pieces. I even had to remove mu underwear. They feared that we could smuggle something in.

What were you doing during those three days?

Mainly, we were talking and playing gummons. At least he could play gummons with us, because he has noone there to play with... We also cooked food and walked around the yard.


What has your father told you?


He told us that he learned a lot. He learned to stay calm and ignore insignificant things. He tries to remember everything and have things analyzed. Very soon, it will become a moment in history and new books. We talked about everything about philosophy. He realized how many mistakes he had made and what should be done now. We talked about politics, the opposition, Lukashenk and the European Union. He noted that he never realized that a human being in this country is treated like an animal. If they could violate the rights of the former presidential contender, what can we say about the ordinary folks?

Doe he have access to information?


He is subjected to information blockade. He does get the news from the internet. Skrabets wrote him for letters and enclosed some print-out with political news froim the web. The letters reached him, but the enclosed documents were removed.

We heard the rumors recently that he was beaten or attacked. Is it true?

This happened when he was exiting his hunger strike when he was just 60 kg and could hardly move. An officer in charge approached him and wanted to hit him, but my father moved aside. He feels very sorry that he moved away because it could have been a physical attack and he could have later proved that he was beaten. Now it turns out that the father moved aside, and they chared him with violating the internal order.

We know that you tried to treat your father with some tasteful things?

We have brought a watermelon, home-cooked cakes with cabbage, cherries, mushrooms with baby potatoes. He also ate a fresh vegetable salad. He said he even forgot that such food could exist. We were allowed to bring in 30 k only. We wanted to bring in as much as possible, because the next parcel could be sent inj two months only.

The girls even brought his favorite goat milk, but unfortunately he was unable to take it because of the extra weight

He drank two liters of milk over the three days that we spent together. In the morning, he normally drinks a fresh and has a porridge on water for lunch. For supper, he takes a coffee or a tea. It means he alsmost eats anything there.