17 November 2006
Kozulin's daughters to join solidarity hunger strike

Aleksandr Kozulin's two daughters on Saturday will join a hunger strike staged in solidarity with the former presidential candidate.

Yuliya and Olga Kozulin will replace Nadezhda Baturo and Oleg Volchek, activists of the Belarusian Social Democratic Party "Hramada" (BSDP), in what is termed as a "relay hunger strike," BSDP member Ales Streltsov told BelaPAN.

Opposition activists have spent short spells without food since late October to display solidarity with Dr. Kozulin, the imprisoned BSDP leader who went on an open-ended hunger strike on October 20, saying that he was protesting the illegal reelection of Aleksandr Lukashenko for a third term this past March.

"We get phone calls from people who announce their intention to become a member of the solidarity hunger strike every day. We include them in a list and arrange the protest's schedule. Thus, the chain of hunger-strikers is not broken. As soon as one starts taking food, he or she is replaced by another. This will continue as long as Aleksandr Kozulin is on hunger strike," Igor Maslovsky, leader of the BSDP chapter in the Brest region, told BelaPAN earlier this month.

Among those who joined the protest are residents of Brest, Baranovichi, Grodno, Minsk and the Ukrainian town of Kovel, and two Belarusians studying in Poland.

The solidarity hunger strike was started by Anna Kanyus, leader of the BSDP chapter in Brest, on October 30. She withdrew from the protest on November 3. //BelaPAN