A Belarusian artist who once dumped manure outside the office of President Alexander Lukashenko has died in the prison where he was serving a five-year sentence for his political activities, human rights activists and his wife said.
Ales Pushkin, 57, died in a prison on Tuesday in Grodno in western Belarus of unknown causes, even though he was not known to be sick, according to the Viasna human rights centre.
Pushkin’s wife, Janina Demuch, told The Associated Press that the artist had “died in the intensive care unit of the prison under unclear circumstances”.
There was no comment from the Belarusian authorities.
Pushkin was a political performer and cartoonist whose subject was often Lukashenko, the country’s authoritarian leader. The artist painted Lukashenko in hell, surrounded by riot police, on a fresco in a church in the Belarusian city of Bobr.
Original from www.aljazeera.com