09 Aug 24 | Belarus, Europe and Central Asia, News and features
Four years ago today, Belarusian president Alyaksandr Lukashenka claimed victory in the country’s elections garnered more than 80% of the vote. The victory meant a sixth term in office.
That 80% figure is as meaningless as Vladimir Putin’s recent 88% in Russia and Paul Kagame’s patently ridiculous 99.15% in Rwanda. If you’re a dictator it’s just a matter of choosing a number you’re comfortable with.
The average Belarusian was not at all comfortable with that 80% and hundreds of thousands went onto the streets to protest.
Such huge demonstrations did not sit well with Lukashenka and they were met with a huge show of force.
At the time of the 2020 election, the EU said the election was “neither free nor fair”, the UK said it “did not accept the result” and called the subsequent repression of protesters “grisly” while the US Government said “severe restrictions on ballot access for candidates, [the] prohibition of local independent observers at polling stations, intimidation tactics employed against opposition candidates, and the detentions of peaceful protesters and journalists marred the process”.
The demonstrations did not manage to topple Lukashenka, one of Russia’s biggest allies. Vladimir Putin congratulated him on his victory and offered military help to put down protests..
Almost 1,400 political prisoners now languish in Belarusian jails, according to the human rights centre Viasna. That’s one political prisoner for every day that has elapsed since the rigged 2020 election.
A few weeks ago, the UK and 37 other countries condemned the human rights situation in Belarus. Speaking on behalf of all these countries, the Slovenian ambassador to the OSCE Barbara Zvokelj said those jailed “experience torture, inhuman or degrading treatment, acts of physical or sexual violence, lack of basic medical care and privacy, lack of a fair trial, psychological pressure and discrimination, with their cells and clothing marked with yellow tags.”
Those behind bars experience horrendous conditions and include Nobel laureate Ales Bialiatski, the lawyer Maksim Znak and musician Maria Kalesnikava who are all being held incommunicado. They also include our former colleague Andrei Aliaksandrau, who was previously the Belarus and OSCE programme officer at Index.
Also imprisoned is former blogger Siarhei Tsikhanouski who announced his intention to stand in the 2020 elections against Lukashenka but was arrested two days later. In the event, his wife Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya stood against the incumbent. The regime claimed she won just 8.8% of the vote.
In an Index exclusive, the country’s would-be president has written an article for us on the country’s political prisoners. Sviatlana has not heard from her husband since 9 March 2023. She writes, “For my son and daughter, sending letters, postcards and drawing pictures to their father was keeping us morally afloat. They constantly wrote to him but never received any answer.”
Despite many families not receiving answers from their jailed loved ones in Belarus, they are not forgotten.
On Monday 5 August, Index hosted an evening of film and activism in partnership with St John’s Waterloo and Roast Beef Productions, joining a room full of friends and colleagues passionate about free expression, human rights and democracy to mark the fourth anniversary of Lukashenka’s fraudulent elections.
The event’s organiser Index development officer Anna Millward said, “In the belly of the old crypt, we stood in solidarity with, and gave voice to, just some of the many political prisoners in Belarus. Together, we watched the powerful and unmissable documentary The Accidental President (Roast Beef Productions), which charts the presidential campaign of Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya. As the film ended and the lights stayed dimmed, the audience started to softly sing the resistance song Moment: it was an unexpected, moving moment full of hope. A panel discussion followed exploring everything from following Sviatlana’s campaign behind the scenes through to the chilling reach of transnational repression with PEN Belarus President, Taciana Niadbaj; Belarusian poet, writer and activist Hanna Komar; and Roast Beef Productions’ Mike Lerner and Martin Herring.”
She adds, “Finally, we launched our pilot exhibition Letters from Lukashenka’s Prisoners, giving unjustly detained individuals a voice by collecting, translating, publishing and displaying their letters. The exhibition was designed and curated by Martha Hegarty on behalf of Index, and is inspired by a project of the same name carried out by Index in partnership with Belarus Free Theatre, Human Rights House Foundation and Politzek.me between 2021 and 2023.”
As we mark this dark anniversary of Belarus it is poignant to think about the words of the song sung this past Monday.
“We are Belarusians, we are going in peace. In a bright and sunny way.
Destroy the prison walls! If you want freedom, take it!
The wall will soon collapse, collapse, collapse — And the old world is buried!”
Let us hope that is the case sooner rather than later.
09 Aug 24 | Belarus, Europe and Central Asia, News and features
It is not hard to explain what has been going on in Belarus with political prisoners since 2020. I’ve been doing it for 48 months now.
During the last presidential election, on this day four years ago, Belarusians decided that we didn’t want to live under Lukashenka’s dictatorship anymore. Or any dictatorship. We want simple (yet complex) things – a free and democratic country, an openly and honestly elected leader, and no violence or political repression. Yet the dictator relied on his autocratic power to suffocate the protests. The protests – yes. But not the resistance.
Nevertheless, it is hard to explain what is going on when Belarusian prisons swallow your loved ones. As the wife of a political prisoner, I’ve been going through this for 51 months now.
The last time I saw my husband, Siarhei Tsikhanouski, in person was in May 2020.
The last time I spoke with him was in October 2020, when, for some unexplainable reason, Lukashenka personally let Siarhei call me. The last time we heard from Siarhei was 9 March 2023.
My husband is being held incommunicado. For my son and daughter, sending letters, postcards and drawing pictures to their father was keeping us morally afloat.
They constantly wrote him but never received any answer. Apart from Siarhei, nine people have been held in incommunicado mode for more than 500 days – including Maria Kalesnikava, Maksim Znak, Viktar Babaryka, Ihar Losik and Mikalai Statkevich.
Writing to people behind bars is a challenge. How to write something, making sure your letter will be delivered? Can you imagine how full the trash bins of the prison censors have been for one and a half years? Our loved ones cannot hear from us. But all the small people, the bricks of Lukashenka’s system, can see our support.
And that’s why we must continue more, louder and harder than ever. So many prisoners don’t receive all the correspondence or are kept isolated, but we don’t even know about that. We don’t know in what conditions our Nobel laureate Ales Bialiatski is held. Or Volha Zalatar, a mother of five children. Or journalist Andrei Aliaksandrau. Or activist Andrei Voinich, who is held in a colony while having a critical health condition.
And it’s our joint job to help. I say “our” because we Belarusians share the same values with you. We are also part of the European family. And we cannot fight the dictator and his ill-treatment of the people alone.
We can all take simple steps to show solidarity with repressed people and make it visible to all. How many trash bins do they have in prisons for all the letters and postcards? How much ink do they have to censor our words of support? Let’s not leave them any chance to keep people hidden from the world, our solidarity. Let’s bring freedom to every one of the around 1400 political prisoners in Belarus. But first – take simple steps to support them.
To send a letter you can:
– use the special form online
– use the Dissident.by form
– learn more here
For the list of political prisoners in Belarus check:
– Viasna human rights center
– Dissident.by
– Politzek.me
To read some letters from political prisoners that Index has translated and published, check out our Letters from Lukashenka’s Prisoner project here.
07 Aug 24 | Belarus, Lithuania, News and features, Ukraine, Volume 53.02 Summer 2024
Andrej Strizhak, a human rights activist and Belarus exile, uses an electric scooter to go around the streets of Vilnius’s old town.
“It is a very convenient means of transportation,” he told Index, sitting in a coffee shop at The House of the Signatories where Lithuania’s Act of Independence was signed in 1918.
Strizhak is founder of the Belarus Solidarity Foundation, Bysol, a humanitarian organisation which gives financial help to political prisoners, striking workers and other activists critical of the repressive regime of President Aliaksandr Lukashenka. Recently Bysol has also focused on aid to Ukraine in its fight against the Russian invasion that Vladimir Putin launched in February 2022.
For Strizhak, both struggles are connected.
“Belarus’s ‘freedom key’ is in Ukraine, and many Belarusians are helping fight the war in Ukraine,” he said. “If Putin fails, then Lukashenka will lose his principal ally.”
His colleague, former male model, fitness trainer and media celebrity turned political activist Andrey Tkachov, joined us in the café. Tkachov like Strizhak is in his thirties. He’s an immensely tall and striking figure, dressed in black. He oversees the management of the Medical Solidarity Fund, operating under the Bysol Foundation umbrella. He sees the conflict in stark terms.
“It is a war between good and evil. Russia is knowingly bombing hospitals and we are working on getting medical supplies and equipment.”
Bysol has raised over $10.7 million and acts as a platform for other organisations or individuals to raise funds for humanitarian causes.
Most of it has been done through cryptocurrency because, as Strizhak explained, it is “hard for the government to trace these transactions.”
During the first days of the Ukrainian war, Bysol received requests for cash to buy vehicles, drones and first aid kits; funds were needed for emergency contraceptive and rape kits for Ukrainian war victims of sexual abuse and for legal fees to pursue justice for war crimes. Within a few days, Bysol raised over $130,000 for Ukrainian humanitarian causes and for Belarusian volunteers working in Ukraine.
As the war progressed, the foundation used its money to aid wounded Belarusian fighters to obtain medical assistance, move to Poland or Lithuania and heal from PTSD. Bysol handed over radios, sets of uniforms for medical doctors and anti-thermal camouflage cloaks to the Belarusians fighting in Ukraine.
They gave others help too.
For those who refused to fight or faced repression for opposing the war, Bysol staff drafted manuals on evacuation from Belarus, Russia and Ukraine. They also posted instructions in a Telegram chat group, BysolEvacuation. Users issued advice on how to leave the war zone, discussed visa procedures and shared experiences on border crossings.
Strizhak and other activists first established Bysol in August 2020, as a response to violence against the opposition after the Belarus presidential election which saw Lukashenka winning a sixth term in office. Strizhak had already been detained several times by the police for his political activities and during the election summer, friends advised him to go on “vacation” abroad. He traveled to Kyiv, hoping to spend a month in Ukraine. There, building on his humanitarian work and crowdfunding skills, Strizhak came up with the idea of a fund-raising organisation.
He was joined in Ukraine by Tkachov, with whom he had worked during the Covid-19 pandemic and who had just been released from police custody. Tkachov had stayed in Belarus and joined anti-government protests in Minsk, witnessing police using grenades and shooting at peaceful opposition.
“The day after the elections, my friend and I took a ride around Minsk to check the aftermath of the protests,” Tkachov told Index. “An OMON (special police force) car stopped us and took us to a detention centre.” Officers gave Tkachov some “special attention” for his critical political opinions. He was handcuffed and beaten.
“Some of us fainted from the pain and from the inflicted injuries. We laid in puddles of blood and urine and prayed to be alive,” he said. Eventually, he lost consciousness when a soldier stepped on his neck.
“I regained consciousness only when police brought me to the prison, and a soldier poured water on me,” he said.
Together with the other 35 detainees, he spent three days in a cell suitable to accommodate 10 people.
In the late autumn of 2020 both dissidents decided to move to Lithuania, a member state of the EU and NATO, determined to expand Bysol. “Ukraine did not feel safe enough for us,” explained Strizhak.
Strizhak first raised money through a friend in the Netherlands who opened a fundraising account on Facebook. “We couldn’t do it from Belarus or Ukraine. Only people who live in ‘the white-world’ – the USA or Western Europe – can open fundraising accounts on Facebook,” he said.
Help started pouring in and more so when they were established in Vilnius. The most active supporters of the fund were and still are the Belarusian diaspora.
Walking a thin line between publicity and safety, Bysol has come to rely on cryptocurrency. Using traditional currency, customers rely on bank services and often pay high fees for financial transactions that might take a few days to complete, but cryptocurrency is a digital currency based on a network spread across many computers, unregulated by central government authorities. Unlike traditional financial institutions, opening a cryptocurrency wallet does not require identification verification, credit, or background checks: a person needs just a laptop or a smartphone with an internet connection and there is virtually no way for the government officials to stop, censor or reverse these transactions.
People find Bysol through social media and by word of mouth and the foundation follows a rigorous verification process before providing any help.
“We can’t name recipients and they can’t say ‘Thank you’ to us,” Strizak said.
Tkachov focuses on supporting Belarusian medical professionals and medical causes.
“Medical doctors actively expressed their opposition to the government’s actions. They were the ones who saw wounded, beaten and dead protesters. They described people arriving at the hospital as if they were brought from a battlefield with gunshot wounds or limbs ripped off by grenade explosions,” he said. Many medical doctors who expressed their disagreement about the government’s actions were laid off from state-run hospitals.
The Department of Investigation Committee in Minsk has initiated criminal proceedings against Strizhak who is accused of providing “training of individuals to take part in group activities, grossly violating public order” and financing extremism. Bysol itself has been labelled an extremist organisation and Belarus has listed its founders on the country’s wanted list and the wanted list of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), made up of Russia and other ex-Soviet states still in Russia’s orbit.
Tkachov said he was always interested in history, especially events leading to the outbreak of World War II. “I could not understand why the powerful states could not prevent it,” he said. “Witnessing unfolding events in Ukraine, I finally understood it. When I think about how much more needs to be done, I worry my efforts are not enough, or are not effective enough. We need to help many people.”
Since his early years, Strizhak was determined to bring change to society: “I can’t tolerate hypocrisy, lies or double standards,” he said. He travelled to the Donbas region of Ukraine from 2017 to 2020 to document war crimes committed by pro-Russian separatists. He has mourned the death of close work partners.
Although he is now far from the war zone, he visualises his efforts with a consciousness of the samurai way of “dying before going into battle.” Like Japan’s ancient warriors, he said, he is waging his humanitarian efforts fully committed and without fear.
05 Jul 24 | Belarus, Europe and Central Asia, News and features
In a rare piece of good news from Belarus, it has been revealed that the regime of Alyaksandr Lukashenka, who was re-elected as president for the sixth time in 2020 after a disputed election, has released at least 16 political prisoners on health grounds.
On 2 July, Lukashenka said, “Do not be surprised if, in a few days, very seriously ill people will be released, who did not manage to escape and are in prisons, who were breaking and destroying the country in 2020. But they are, indeed, seriously ill. Mostly with cancers.”
An amnesty was announced the following day to mark what the government called “the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Belarus from Nazi invaders”.
The Viasna Human Rights Center has reported that 16 people – 13 men and three women – have been released.
The names of most of the prisoners have not been revealed for safety reasons but they are known to include Ryhor Kastusiou.
Kastusiou, 67, has been chairman of the Belarusian Popular Front party since 2017 and was arrested on 12 April 2021, in Škloŭ, charged with “plotting against the government in order to seize state power”.
While in prison, Kastusiou has been diagnosed with cancer and critics say he has been denied proper medical treatment while behind bars.
According to Viasna, on 16 July 2023, Kastusiou told his wife in a phone call that not only had he been deprived of relatives’ visits, but also that his private records had been taken from him, including a draft of a book and mailing addresses. In November last year, he was placed in a punishment cell for six months.
The Belarusian state tries to portray such releases as a humanitarian gesture by Lukashenka to pardon critically ill political prisoners, but human rights activists say this is not true. Some of those released are believed to have served almost the full terms of their unjust politically motivated sentences.
Lukashenka has been known for his “trading skills” with Western countries for decades, with repressed people in the country not just targets for his authoritarianism but also as a currency for exchange and the lifting of sanctions.
While the news of the release has been welcomed by human rights defenders in the country and by the country’s government in exile, the fact remains there are still more than 1,400 political prisoners behind bars.
