Gazeta Wyborcza: Belarusians Are Waiting For Them, Lukashenka Is Afraid Of Them

• 10.07.2023, 13:08

The article by Iryna Khalip about Belarusian political prisoners was published by one of the most prominent Polish editions.

It seems that it is easier for a former political prisoner to write about current political prisoners: you know this issue inside out, you were there and you know the conditions for people who were imprisoned because of their civic position, and what happens to them. To be honest, the opposite is true. It is much more difficult to write about political prisonersIt's because of the fact that you know what is happening there, behind mouldy stone walls in cells where it is unbearably cold in winter and you can die from the heat in summer. Every word turns into memories of one's own pain, and this echoes the pain of the prisoners, you even suffocate because of this, writes Belarusian journalist Iryna Khalip for the Polish Gazeta Wyborcza.

Still, it's necessary to write about them because, against the backdrop of all world catastrophes, wars and deaths, Belarusian political prisoners are gradually becoming like a part of the world landscape: desert in Africa, ice in Antarctica, and political prisoners in Belarus. Thousands of unjustly convicted, but still alive, they are not under fire and their houses are not blown up, so there seems to be nothing tragic. Yes, ruined lives, stolen years, families plunged into despair - after all, this is what world history consists of, isn't it? .. No. And as their suffering becomes part of the landscape, we are to shout louder and louder about them. This is all that we - former political prisoners - can do for those who are in our places there now, who are in prisons.

I am writing now only about a few political prisoners - about those whom I know personally. You just need to remember that there are thousands of such people in Belarus.

Journalists and terrorists are one and the same for Lukashenka

Perhaps the journalist Andrzej Poczobut is the only Belarusian political prisoner about whom the readers of Gazeta Wyborcza know. Those who read the newspaper also read Poczobut's articles about Belarus. Andrzej has only been writing letters from prison for more than two years. And we, his colleagues, have been writing about him.

I don't really know if a street will ever be named after Andrzej Poczobut, a journalist at Gazeta Wyborcza, but a sanction unit of measurement against the Belarusian regime "one Poczobut" can be put into use today. The Hrodna court sentenced him to 8 years in prison for "calling for sanctions" and "inciting discord" - the next day, Poland closed the Babrouniki border crossing. The Minister of the Interior of Poland, Mariusz Kamiński, then said that as soon as the journalist was released, the crossing would be immediately opened. The Court of Appeal upheld the verdict - on the same day, the Ministry of Internal Affairs banned trucks registered in Belarus and Russia from entering Poland. The signal is so simple that at all desire it is impossible to find hidden meanings there: there will be sanctions until you release him, and if something happens to Andrzej in prison, the border closed to trucks will seem too childish for you.

Lukashenka, in turn, is trying to use Poczobut for bargaining. In March, speaking to deputies, he was theatrically indignant: “How can a person be exchanged for a border crossing?!” And he immediately offered an exchange for those activists who managed to escape from Belarus and to whom Poland provided protection.

The problem is that Andrzej Poczobut personally does not agree to trade or exchange. Lukashenka’s propagandist Yury Vaskresenski (in 2020 he also was in a pre-trial detention centre for several months, and then was released and became a person close to Lukashenka) spoke on the air of state-owned television in the spring. He said then that he, following Lukashenka's instructions, asked the investigative committee to organize a meeting with the arrested journalist. They allowed a visit. “It's necessary to remove this stumbling block in order to normalize Belarusian-Polish relations,” Vaskresenski said on TV on April 3. The stumbling block is, of course, Andrzej Poczobut. According to Vaskresenski, the purpose of that meeting was to convince Andrzej to agree to his release on the condition of leaving for Poland. “But he attacked me and acted like a sociopath,” Vaskresenski said.

No, Vaskresenski, you are wrong. Pochobut did not behave like a sociopath but like a hero. He considered it below his dignity even to talk on this subject. He refused to be a commodity. He did not betray either Belarus or Poland. He is himself even in those monstrous conditions - Andrzej Poczobut, a brilliant journalist, a man of conviction, a brave man, a fighter against injustice with an unbending spirit. Even these qualities have become crimes in modern Belarus.

Andrzej Poczobut was not only sentenced to 8 years in prison - the Belarusian KGB put him on the list of terrorists in October last year. Officially, this is called the "List of Persons Involved in Terrorist Activities." And this means a ban on any financial transactions. Outside prison, it means a ban from opening bank accounts, selling or buying apartments or cars, and even paying utility bills. And in prison, this means that even close relatives cannot send money to Andrzej so that he can buy something for himself in the prison store or subscribe to a magazine. Cash is prohibited in prison, and any non-cash transactions are prohibited for those from the terrorist list. This is one more type of punishment in addition to his eight-year sentence term. more specifically, it's another kind of revenge - this is how those who feel worthless next to outstanding people take revenge on outstanding people.

“I don’t rise in front of the bandits!”

Palina Sharenda-Panasiuk from Brest is called the Belarusian Joan of Arc in Belarus. Palina is a political scientist, she graduated from the Brest University and had a master's degree in Poland. She earned money by teaching Polish. Palina made her choice - political activity and the risks associated with it at a young age when graduation from the university coincided with the signing of an agreement on the union state of Belarus and Russia. She headed the Brest branch of the Young Front, the youth opposition organization, and then became the coordinator of the European Belarus Civil Campaign in the Brest region. Together with her husband Andrei, they were one of the most active families in this city and organized protests. Both of them were often detained and sentenced to 15 days on administrative clauses. Of course, Palina participated in all the protests in August 2020. They came for her on January 3, 2021.

The door was broken into the apartment where Palina was with her youngest son, four-year-old Stakh, and armed men in balaclavas, in black uniforms without identification marks, broke in. It could be anyone - bandits, robbers, special forces, murderers. Little Stakh got scared and started crying. Palina did what any mother would have done in her place - she tore off the balaclava from the first one that came to hand. She was taken to prison. The torn-off balaclava allowed them to charge her under one more article.

They were going to arrest Palina for “insulting Lukashenka” and “insulting a representative of the authorities”, and thanks to the balaclava incident, they also accused her of violence against a police officer. The first prison term according to the verdict was relatively short - two years in prison (although there are no “small” terms, to be honest: even a week in prison is unbearable, not to mention years). But this term was not the last. This became clear during the trial.

I can’t but quote Palina’s dialogue with her judge:

JUDGE: Defendant, rise!

PALINA: I don’t rise in front of bandits.

JUDGE: Since what day have you been in custody?

PALINA: Taken prisoner on January 3.

JUDGE: Do you want to challenge the composition of the court?

PALINA: You are not a court.

JUDGE: Are you challenging me?

PALINA: I’m challenging the whole system.

JUDGE: Do you acknowledge your guilt?

PALINA: Do you acknowledge that you are participating in political repressions?

JUDGE: You don’t have the right to ask the court. Don't you plead guilty?

PALINA: To repulse a bandit is the honour and duty of a citizen.

JUDGE: Defendant, do you have any questions?

PALINA: Aren't you ashamed??

JUDGE: The question is removed.

PALINA: Do you have a conscience?

JUDGE: The question is removed.

Prisoners of the women's colony No. 4 in Homel, where they brought Palina, sewed a uniform for the police. Palina immediately refused to do this. And again there was a trial in a new criminal case - about disobedience to the demands of the administration of the colony. One more year was added to her sentence and she was transferred to another colony - No 24, in the Zarechcha of the Rechytsa district. However, Palina did not manage to find out if they sewed a uniform there and for whom - she was immediately sent to the ShIZO (punishment cell). This is a cold, damp little cell room and everything is forbidden there: letters, newspapers, books, walks. A prisoner can only stand or sit on a narrow iron stool there from 5 am to 10 pm. Palina spent more than 200 days in such a cell room. And at the end of May, when she was informed about a new trial - again for disobedience to the administration - Palina Sharenda-Panasiuk wrote a statement renouncing Belarusian citizenship. She wrote about the occupation regime in Belarus. She writes that the regime is destroying the independence of the country and participating in the war against Ukraine and killing political prisoners in prisons. Palina writes that she wants to have nothing in common with this regime. After that, Palina was taken to a psychiatric hospital - allegedly for a forensic psychiatric examination. You can actually imagine what they can do to her there when reading the memoirs of Soviet dissidents who were subjected to the methods of punitive psychiatry. Palina was not broken by torture, threats and punishment cells, and they decided to try psychotropic drugs on her.

Palina's husband Andrei Sharenda is convinced that she will not be released as long as Lukashenka is in power. Palina also understands this. The criminal charges of disobedience to the administration can be applied indefinitely. This means that there is no cherished exact date for Palina to be released. There is only this condition: she will be free if Lukashenka disappears. And all the rest.

"They won't see our tears"

Since Belarus came under the rule of Lukashenka, not a single protest in Minsk was complete without Alena Lazarchyk. In addition to three children, the usual boring work in housing and communal services, parents and country house, she also has a burning sense of justice. Therefore, as soon as Lukashenka held his first referendum in 1995 and returned Soviet symbols instead of national ones, Alena joined the yet small resistance. A lot of detentions, administrative trials, fines - the usual life of the Belarusian opposition leader for decades.

We can say now that Alena started the 2020 women's marches in Minsk. On September 17, 2020, she was detained when she was leaving the office of the Viasna Human Rights Center (its head Ales Bialiatski was awarded with the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022 while in prison). On that day, she had not yet been sent to prison for eight years - this was done later, a year later. On that day, they simply kept her at the police station until 11 pm and let her go. But during this time, Artsiom, Alena's first-grader son, was sent to an orphanage, because his mother did not come to school for him. Despite the fact that Alena's eldest daughter was already an adult and could easily cope with such a simple task as picking up her younger brother from school, they simply did not call her.

The information that Alena Lazarchyk's son was sent to an orphanage spread on social media the next day. Hundreds of Minsk citizens gathered near the orphanage of the Frunzenski district of Minsk on Saturday, September 19, 2020. They came with gifts for Artsiom, and hung the fence with posters “DO NOT TOUCH CHILDREN!!”. And they gave Alena her child back rapidly when she came to the orphanage, so that she would only take people away from the state institution. The sympathetic women gathered there, inspired by this small victory, went on a spontaneous march to the center of the city. Since then, women's marches in Minsk on Saturdays have become a tradition - until the protest was destroyed by mass repressions.

They came for Alena on December 30, 2021. They broke down the door and took her away. Alena managed to promise Artsiom that she would come back soon. At first, he didn’t even want to go into her room: “I don’t want to go there, we were there with my mother!” Then he reconciled reality and now he writes letters to her in prison. Children of political prisoners grow up as fast as children in war. His older sister Maryna became his legal guardian. Alena was charged under four articles of the criminal code - from insulting Lukashenka to creating an extremist group - and sentenced to eight years in prison. Moreover, during the investigation, she was not even kept in a Minsk prison - they took her to Mahiliou to make it more difficult and expensive for Maryna to bring parcels to her mother.

Since January, Alena Lazarchyk has been in the Homel women's colony. Since she was brought there, the lawyer has never been able to meet her - they simply do not let him in under far-fetched pretexts. The daughter suspects that Аlena is being kept in a punishment cell - if a lawyer is not allowed to see a person, if they are deprived of packages and visits, if letters did not reach her for months, this can always mean only one thing: she is in a torture cell where they are trying to break her.

Shortly before the verdict, Alena managed to send her prison diary. Here is what she wrote while sitting in the cell of the Mahiliou prison: “Here is a special world. Despite everything, people are living and finding a reason to rejoice. They are happy when someone is freed, when someone receives a letter and when someone goes on a meeting with loved ones to see them finally. We celebrate birthdays, make gifts and cakes. We help each other and share everything. We tell funny stories and sing songs. They are telling us that we are there to suffer and they are doing everything for this. But we are laughing in their faces. We are happy to see the sun and the sky on walks. A dog sitting in an aviary, a kitten in the yard. Or just grass and dandelions. We are happy with any little thing that we would not pay attention to before. Of course, it's sad sometimes. I just want to walk down a street. To take a walk. To see people. To walk without purpose and without a convoy. Without shouting: 'Stop! Face to the wall! Hands behind your back!' Just to be free. It's as little but so much? Again a paradox. But we straighten our backs, raise our heads and walk proudly. They won't see our tears. Never show your weakness to your enemies. In any incomprehensible situation, make a proud appearance. The only way. They will not see fear in our eyes. Only hatred and contempt. They say there is a time to love and a time to hate. Well, now is the time to hate. And yet we hope that there will still be time for us to love. We are waiting, hoping and believing. Only this faith gives us the strength to fight.”

Political prisoner forever

Andrzej, Palina, Alena will return home one day. It depends on us to make it soon, on us Belarusians, and, of course, on the severity of Western sanctions. But Mikalai Klimovich will never come back home. Despite the fact that his term was the smallest - only a year in prison. But that was enough to kill him.

Mikalai was 61 years old. A resident and patriot of Pinsk, he loved his city, Belarus and freedom very much. He was blogging about Pinsk and always participated in protests. He could not get a job due to his active civic position. This has always been a problem in Belarus, especially in towns, where the state bodies know all the activists. In 2020, when he was heavily fined for participating in the protests, Mikalai walked other people's dogs to earn some money. He suffered a stroke in 2022. Then he underwent heart surgery and was recognized as a second-group disabled person. He had to be constantly under the supervision of a doctor and take many strong drugs.

Mikalai Klimovich was arrested in December last year. The reason was the repost of the caricature of Lukashenka. Three days later, he became ill, an ambulance was called to the prison, and Mikalai was taken to the hospital. The investigators issued a restriction of travel order for him so that the disabled person would stay at home until the trial, under the supervision of doctors. His disability, his poor health - all this was known to the judge and attached to the case file. Yes, and the sanction of Article 368 of the Criminal Code (“insulting Lukashenka”) provides for different types of punishments - from a fine to house arrest. Mikalai said in court that if he goes to prison, he will die there. Nevertheless, Pinsk judge Andrei Bychyla sentenced him to a year in prison. Mikalai Klimovich was taken into custody in the courtroom on February 27. He lived in prison for a little over two months and died on May 6. He will never come back home and see his native country free. And we will always feel guilty for not saving this good honest man. But I doubt that those who raised their hands to send a disabled person to death for reposting someone else's caricature, even for a second felt guilty when they learned about his death. Belarusian punishers are a different biological species, which do not have conscience, shame, or guilt. Only instinctive reflexes rule their lives.

From time to time I visit Mikalai's Facebook page. I do not want to believe that there will never be his posts again - with love for my native Pinsk and Belarus. I really want to believe that my friends will return from prison much earlier than their terms are over. I wrote about only a few of the thousands, but any Belarusian can tell the stories of his or her acquaintances, friends and relatives who are in prison. Repressions are like war, they affect everyone. If you are not in prison, it means that your brother is in prison, or a classmate, or a neighbour. And inhuman suffering, torture, threats - this is now the life of thousands of Belarusians. Please, remember them. Please, remember us.