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Our friend and former colleague Andrei Aliaksandrau has again been writing letters from prison in Belarus. Aliaksandrau and his fiancé Irina Zlobina were detained on 12 January 2021 – almost 550 days ago – and face up to 15 years in prison on charges of treason. The authorities claim that Andrei helped train “at least 260 people to participate in group actions that grossly violate public order”, including paying administrative fines, the cost of meals in places of detention and bills for the services of lawyers. Index on Censorship believes the charges are baseless and politically motivated and he and his co-defendants should be released immediately without charge.
In his letter released last week, Andrei wrote, somewhat sarcastically: “I spent the whole of June travelling – it’s summer as it should be”.
He wrote: “Our trial is secret, but I feel the support and all the vibes well. Now is definitely the most interesting and diverse time in the past year and a half, if only because I am seeing and even sitting next to the people dear to me almost every day. We are in a cheerful mood, our excitement, perhaps, is only from the joy of seeing each other, the flight is normal. There will be no miracles, but no one has expected them. There is no news or surprises here.”
He continued: “How is the summer going on? And how is life in general now? There is little to see from here, and there is only a continuous war on TV. And how is peace?”
“It’s going to be alright. Let’s write further,” he concluded.
Andrei and Irina’s trial has currently been suspended for two months, pending further cirminal proceedings.
I was nervous during my first trial. No wonder – I’ve never been under arrest before. I was nervous even though I did not commit any crime.
I went through quite a rough detention in Minsk in October 2020. After the rigged presidential elections in Belarus in August 2020 there was a wave of protests, which were brutally suppressed.
Roughly 40,000 people went through administrative arrest just for taking part.
The majority of those people peacefully protested on the streets and now they being accused of participating in mass riots and violating the law. Some were journalists whose work the Belarusian state now calls treason. They include a broad range of ordinary Belarusians, from baristas to CEOs of IT start-ups, cultural workers to taxi drivers, who simply wanted a change in their country.
These people are being kept in pre-trial detention centres for up to a year and a half. Some are kept with up to 18 room-mates in crowded cells measuring five by six metres with no ventilation. They are poorly fed, allowed to shower only once a week for 20 minutes, often with no hot water and they are deprived of correspondence.
Thousands of those arrested have submitted statements to the International Committee for Investigation of Torture in Belarus (ICIT), a coalition of five human rights organisations in the country, to say they experienced different kinds of torture during their detention.
I was one of the lucky ones who did not face this horror.
My so-called trial was very fast and conducted via Skype. In the day of the trial I was told to go into the corridor from my cell where an officer with a computer was waiting for me. I went from the cell with my dirty hair, not looking good at all, and still wearing the hipster jacket in which I was detained. I saw the look on the computer guy’s face: he could not believe that I may have commited something that had brought me to prison. I asked him: “Do I look a dangerous criminal to you?” He kept staring at me and said “No…”.
My trial lasted for around 20 minutes, with the judge somehow pretending to follow the procedure, saying all the necessary but impossible to process judicial words very fast. The verdict was predictable – guilty. My sentence? Detention for a month.
I had a chance to have a quick chat with my parents as they were in the courtroom together with my lawyer. Other political prisoners have no such chance to say goodbye to their loved ones.
There are 1,492 political prisoners at the moment, including Andrei Aliaksandrau and Irina Zlobina.
Andrei is a journalist and media manager, who in the past has worked with Index on Censorship. Irina is his fiancé – the main reason for her detention. Now they both are accused of organising mass riots and treason simply because they were helping victims of the August 2020 protests. Andrei has always been focused on developing high level journalism in Belarus and is an experienced manager, consulting in different countries; he is also a Liverpool FC fan. Irina’s flower shop was famous in Minsk and everybody knows of her boundless enthusiasm – but the regime is not interested in such people.
Unlike my trial, Andrei and Irina’s is closed. The Belarusian authorities often make a trial closed, citing the need for secrecy.
Sometimes the only chance to see a person in a closed trial is while they are being transferred to the courtroom. There are literally five or six seconds of them walking in the corridor when relatives will try to peer into their faces to understand how they are doing. The mother of one political prisoner played the audio of her grandchild, the prisoner’s little daughter, during this five seconds just so he was able to hear her voice.
The only sure way for friends and family of detainees in closed trials to see them is on state television which broadcasts short clips from the courtroom for the evening news or reports in other state media.
Belarusians don’t know whether to laugh or to cry about this. People are having to subscribe to these propaganda channels on YouTube and Telegram in order not to miss these first images because they haven’t seen their loved ones for so long.
I was nervous and angry during my trial, but I knew I was doing the right thing. The same is true for Andrei – as far as we know from his letters (which are censored and he is constantly being deprived of). Right before the trial he asked the media to publish his statement. In it he said: “I’m going into the trial with no illusion but with a clear conscience”.
Andei’s and Irina’s trial was set to last for a couple of weeks but at the end of June the trial was suspended for two months. It is quite predictable how it will end. What I know from my own personal experience and that of all the prisoners who are writing from prison is that the biggest fear is to be forgotten. We cannot change the course of the trial, but we can certainly influence it. Support the prisoners, share information about them, donate to help their families maintain their lives. This is how to show your disagreement and help change happen.
The summer issue of Index magazine concentrated its efforts on the developing situation between Russia and Ukraine and consequential effects around Europe and the world.
We decided to give voice to journalists, artists and dissidents who chose to respond to this ruthless war. At the same time, we didn’t forget other attacks on freedoms that haven’t been covered around the globe as much as they should.[/vc_column_text][vc_custom_heading text=”Up front”][vc_column_text]Joining Ukraine’s battle for freedom, by Jemimah Steinfeld: We must stand with the bold and brave against Putin.
The Index: A global tour of free expression, departing from the poll booth and arriving at the journalists reporting under Taliban rule.[/vc_column_text][vc_custom_heading text=”Features”][vc_column_text]Fifty years of pride and prejudice, by Peter Tatchell: Following the rise and
corporate fall of London’s march for LGBT rights, will grassroots voices rise again?
India’s meaty issue, by Aishwarya Jagani: When a burger comes with a side of oppression.
Cartoon, by Ben Jennings: Art imitates life, caveman style.
My three years of hell in an Uyghur ‘re-education’ camp, by Gulbahar Hatiwaj and Rahima Mahmut: As the world stays silent, hear the truth from inside China’s brutal concentration camps.
One step ahead of the game, by Chen Dan: Media criticism of the Chinese government is all part of the power play.
Welcome to the kingdom of impunity, by Michael Deibert: The landscape is dangerous for journalists in Haiti. Murders and kidnappings are a daily risk.
Politically corrected? By Issa Sikiti da Silva: The banned words the Kenyan
government doesn’t want to hear in this election year.[/vc_column_text][vc_custom_heading text=”Special report: The battle for Ukraine”][vc_column_text]Losing battle for truth in Russian lecture halls, by Ilya Matveev: The war has put a new strain on academic freedom. A Russian lecturer laments his lost classroom.
Don’t be afraid to say two plus two is four, by Mark Frary and Alla Gutnikova: As a convicted student journalist speaks out for freedom, do Russian dissidents once again face the gulag?
Emotional baggage, by Slavenka Drakulic: How it feels to pack up a life in Ukraine and become a refugee.
Back to the future, by Martin Bright: The world has been turned
upside down for Ukrainian reporters, and this is their new landscape.
On not being shot, by John Sweeney: Amidst the Kremlin-wrought
wreckage, do we need a new era of journalism?
Russia’s trojan horse moves closer to Europe, by Viktória Serdult: In Hungary, Putin’s right-hand man and Europe’s right-wing firebrand wins again.
Turkey’s newfound russophilia, by Kaya Genç: Putinism is seeping into Turkey, and it spells trouble for future freedoms.
Divided by age and a tv screen, by Hanna Komar: How do you make sure your
family see the truth when they’re blinded by Kremlin propaganda? A Belarus activist speaks out.
Culture in the cross hairs, by Andrey Kurkov: Decades after Soviet rule, Ukrainian culture is once again under threat, as are the lives behind the creative expression.
Bordering on media control, by Kseniya Tarasevich: False information about
Ukraine finds fertile breeding ground in Poland.
Treat tragedies of the Ukraine war with dignity, by Olesya Khromeychuk: The grieving hearts left behind when death becomes news fodder.
Worth a gamble, by Jemimah Steinfeld: When telling the truth is a crime, turn to a criminal spam operation.[/vc_column_text][vc_custom_heading text=”Comment”][vc_column_text]
Cancel Putin, not culture, by Maria Sorenson: Banning Russian artists assumes
that they are all collaborators of the Russian state and goes against artistic freedoms.
Beware the ‘civilisation’ battle, by Emily Couch: Why Europe must reject
anti-Asian racism to fully stand with Ukraine.
The silent minority, by Ruth Smeeth: A tribute to those whose work never saw the light of day.[/vc_column_text][vc_custom_heading text=”Culture”][vc_column_text]‘The light is no longer the light it used to be’, by Lyuba Yakimchuk: The poet on children being indoctrinated and the elderly disorientated in Russia-occupied Ukraine.
A cassandra worth heeding, by Dominic Cavendish: Murdered Russian journalist
Anna Politkovskaya, whose dispatches from Chechnya should be put in the spotlight.
Poetic injustice, by Stephen Komarnyckyj: History is repeating itself
on the pages penned by Ukrainian writers.
Banking on Russia’s poetic spirit, by Maria Bloshteyn and Yulia Fridman: A “piggy bank” of Russian poetry is fighting on the right side of Putin’s war.
Metaphors and madness, by Eduardo Halfon: In Guatemala, truth is best expressed through fiction.
Metal shows its mettle, by Guilherme Osinski: A heavy metal band labelled
“satanic” by Iran is free from prison and taking back the microphone.
America’s coming crucible, by Jo-Ann Mort: Women in the USA might soon be in the dark about their own bodies.
In the summer 2022 issue of Index on Censorship, people across the spectrum talk about the corrosive effect of the war in Ukraine on freedoms. Viktoria Sedult, a journalist in Hungary, writes about how Europe’s most right-wing leader, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, used fears of being embroiled in the war to secure a resounding electoral victory. Hanna Komar, an activist from Belarus, tells how she is desperately trying to challenge her parents on the lies they see on their TV. We give space to Ukrainian writers and artists, with a moving essay from Andrey Kurkov on how today, as in the past, Russia is trying to erase Ukraine’s culture, and a discussion with the poet Lyuba Yumichuk on children in Donbas being fed an alternative history. We publish the court statement from student journalist Alla Gutnikova, one of the Doxa Four sentenced to two years’ “correctional labour” in April, alongside an interview with her. Ilya Matveev, a Russian academic, writes about the incredibly difficult environment in his St Petersburg classroom, which eventually led him to flee. And we spotlight the amazing ways people are fighting back.
Andrey Kurkov is an Ukrainian author who has written about 20 documentary, fiction and TV movie scripts and also 19 novels, including the bestseller Death and the Penguin. Read More
Andrey Kurkov is an Ukrainian author who has written about 20 documentary, fiction and TV movie scripts and also 19 novels, including the bestseller Death and the Penguin.
Peter Tatchell is the director of human rights organisation the Peter Tatchell Foundation and highly acknowledged for his work with the LGBT movement.
Peter Tatchell is the director of human rights organisation the Peter Tatchell Foundation and highly acknowledged for his work with the LGBT movement.
Rahima Mahmut is the director of the World Uyghur Congress (UK) and Adviser to the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China.
Rahima Mahmut is the director of the World Uyghur Congress (UK) and Adviser to the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China.