By Natalya Radina, Charter 97
 

The Sunday of 19 December 2010 has ever since been referred to in Belarus as “Bloody Sunday”.

Presidential candidate Nikolai Statkevich

When Dmitry Uss refused to sign a petition for pardon, his extended meeting with his wife was “suddenly” reduced from three days to one.

Dmitry Bondarenko, head of Andrei Sannikov’s election campaign, is one more prisoner who refuses to write a petition. The 47-year-old politician has undergone a complicated neurosurgical operation on his spinal cord during his incarceration

“Don’t turn me into a hero or a traitor,” said Andrei Protasenya, one of those recently released. Nobody condemns what is going on. In this situation, it takes real guts not to cave in

The Sunday of 19 December 2010 has ever since been referred to in Belarus as “Bloody Sunday”. On the day of the country’s presidential elections, a peaceful demo protesting against vote-rigging was brutally dispersed, more than a thousand people being arrested, including virtually all the presidential candidates, members of their teams, journalists and human rights activists. Over 40 people were convicted and presidential candidates and members of their teams were given outrageously long prison sentences of from 2 to 6 years.

It seemed that the authorities had put the lid on dissent in the country completely. Those who are still at large are under KGB surveillance and the others are behind bars. Lukashenko can rule the country happily for another five years.

The trouble is that he has no wherewithal to rule the country. The totalitarian system Lukashenko has built up over the last 17 years is in danger of collapsing for lack of funds injected from abroad. The US has introduced tough economic sanctions. The European Union has not, for the first time, confined itself to tightening visa rules and has, instead, targeted specific members of the dictator’s entourage. Russia no longer intends to subsidise the neighbouring regime and wants to buy the assets of leading enterprises.

In this situation, Lukashenko started another round of games with the West aimed at exchanging political prisoners for loans from European banks and the IMF. In August, Lukashenko had a secret meeting with the Bulgarian Foreign Minister Nikolai Mladenov. He had to turn to the Bulgarians because Italy and Lithuania, on which Minsk used to rely, refused to take part in this dirty game. Lukashenko promised Mladenov to release all political prisoners by mid-October. For a consideration, of course.

Harassment and threats

So far, 13 political prisoners have been released. They are all rank-and-file members of the 19 December protest sentenced to three or four years in prison. The release of each one of them has been accompanied by an announcement by Lukashenko’s press service, stressing that they had all filed petitions for pardon “addressed to the President”. Lukashenko cannot bring himself simply to release these innocent people. He first has to humiliate the “rioters”, trumpet to the whole world that they recognise him as the legitimately elected president and are begging for mercy, regretting that they had dared challenge his legitimacy.

Some of those released still shy away from the press; some have described how they were forced to write these petitions. It all followed a familiar script: KGB officers came to the prison and gave “explanatory talks”. As a rule, they said that the prisoners’ parents were sick and that “everybody has forgotten about you, all the papers write only about arrested presidential candidates and you are just ‘cannon fodder’”. (This is the KGB’s favourite gimmick. I heard it at the KGB pretrial detention centre and it was only when I was released that I learned about the wave of solidarity that had swept the whole world).

If a person resists, they are denied meetings with relatives, refused food parcels and put them in solitary cells. Some “cracked” and wrote the petitions dictated to them by the KGB officers. “Don’t turn me into a hero or a traitor,” said Andrei Protasenya, one of those recently released. Nobody condemns what is going on. In this situation, it takes real guts not to cave in. Dmitry Doronin, a worker whom they let out not long ago, told journalists that the prosecutor kept “reassuring” him during the trial: “You are all hostages. When the authorities need money, they will sell you…”

The question is whether the West will allow itself to be taken in by Lukashenko’s “mercy”. So far, the European Union has insisted on release of all and not some political prisoners. But it is unclear how long it will maintain its firm stand.

The unconquered

Not everyone succumbs. The candidates for president and members of their campaign headquarters are still behind bars. They are the victims of sophisticated torment.

When Dmitry Uss refused to sign a petition for pardon, his extended meeting with his wife was “suddenly” reduced from three days to one.

20-year-old Nikita Likhovid has shown remarkable courage, refusing to plead guilty and obey his captors’ orders. As a result, he has been either in a punishment cell or in solitary confinement for several months. Very thin and suffering from several ailments, he still refuses to repent.

Andrei Sannikov’s press secretary, Alexander Otroshchenkov, is serving a four-year sentence in a high security prison in Vitebsk. I managed to talk with him over the phone for several minutes. “I am not going to write any petitions. I am bracing myself to serve out my four years,” the journalist said firmly.

Presidential candidate Nikolai Statkevich works at a timber sawing factory in the Shklov colony. He told his defence lawyer that the colony’s administration watches his every step. He is forbidden to correspond with his wife – but he writes to her anyway. When he does, his personal letters are read out to the whole work team…

While youth leader Dmitry Dashkevich was in jail, his mother died of heart failure… now only his elderly father is waiting for him. Dmitry has been in the punishment cell at the Goretskaya colony eight times for refusing to “reform”. Dmitry Bondarenko, head of Andrei Sannikov’s election campaign, is one more prisoner who refuses to write a petition. The 47-year-old politician has undergone a complicated neurosurgical operation on his spinal cord during his incarceration. The doctors were at one in saying that he would become an invalid without rehabilitation. And yet, two weeks after the operation, the sick Bondarenko was taken away on a stretcher, first to the Interior Ministry detention centre and from there to a prison in Mogilyov.

Belorussian Vaclav Havel

When journalist Irina Khalip came to visit her husband, presidential candidate Andrei Sannikov, in prison, she did not recognise him. 57-year-old Andrei had shaved off his hair and his beard of forty years.

An intellectual and a diplomat who held the rank of Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary and was at one time Deputy Foreign Minister of Belarus, is now making cardboard boxes. This is hazardous production and Andrei has developed a cough. But he says everybody coughs here. Soap and polyethylene are produced in the shop next door.

While he was still at the KGB pretrial detention centre, the candidate was manhandled by members of a mysterious special unit wearing ski masks, carrying clubs and electric shock devices. Throughout the interrogations, Sannikov was subjected to humiliating frisking, forced to strip naked, put on a rack, had his hands twisted by hand cuffs and was beaten with clubs. He was blackmailed by the threat of reprisals against his wife, a prominent journalist arrested together with him, and their three-year-old son being sent to an orphanage.

But Sannikov stood his ground and did not write any letters of repentance. “I am prepared to discuss only one issue with Lukashenko – transfer of power,” he wrote from prison recently.

To break the vicious circle

The situation in Belarus is a repeat of 2008 when, after the EU and the USA imposed sanctions, Lukashenko began to release political prisoners he had arrested during the 2006 elections. As a result, in early 2009, the dictator got an IMF loan that saved the country from default. For two years, the West tried to tame the Belarussian strongman by inviting him to all sorts of summits, and EU officials shook hands with “Europe’s last dictator”.

Since the “Bloody Sunday” of 19 December, the situation has been developing in the same direction. Faced with an economic crisis, Lukashenko again is trading off his political prisoners.