On March 21, Palina Sharenda-Panasiuk, a Belarusian political prisoner, will have her next birthday in prison.
Palina is a civil and union activist from the town of Brest who was detained on January 3, 2021. Mother of two underage children, she was convicted under a number of articles of the Criminal Code. In late February 2022, yet another criminal case was brought against her and she was sentenced to another year behind bars.
On October 9, 2023, the judge Stanislau Ivanyutsenka found Palina guilty of “willful defiance of penal facility administration” and sentenced her to yet another year in prison on top of the three she already had.
The union activist regularly faces violence and abuse from the penitentiary administration. In March 2024, the husband of the political prisoner shared a storey of another attempt to put pressure on Palina:
“After the quarantine, Palina stayed with other inmates for some 2-3 weeks. In late January-early February she was thrown into the punitive isolation cell. She returned to the general ward at the very end of February, looking pale and emaciated. All that time Palina had spent in the isolation cell, must be some 20 days. In early March, Palina disappeared from the general ward again but nobody knows where exactly they took her.”
Support Palina with money transfers, parcels and telegrams, using this address: СИЗО-3. 246003, г. Гомель, ул. Книжная, 1А, Полина Сергеевна Шаренда-Панасюк.