How much is the head?

The process of releasing political prisoners in Belarus resembles slave trade.

The Sunday of December 19, 2010, in Belarus was called “bloody”. A peaceful protest demonstration against the election fraud was brutally suppressed on the day of the presidential elections; over 1,000 people, including most of presidential candidates, their team members, journalists and human rights activists, were arrested. Over 40 persons were sentenced to imprisonment or restriction of freedom. Presidential candidates and their team activists were given unprecedentedly long prison sentences – from 2 to 6 years.

The authorities seem to have cracked down on dissent once and for all. Those remaining at large are under full control of the KGB, the most dangerous are behind bars. Lukashenka can rule for the next 5 years.

But he suddenly has run out of money. The totalitarian system, built by Lukashenka during 17 years, is in danger of collapsing due to the absence of outside financial inflow. The US imposed strict economic sanctions. The European Union went further visa bans for the first time and slapped targeted sanctions on the dictator’s business partners. Russia does not want any more to give grants to the neighbouring regime for free, but wants to purchase assets of the country’s leading enterprises.

Lukashenka does not like the scenario offered by Russia. Losing control over the leading entities threatens loss of economic and political power.

In this situation Lukashenka starts another game with the West with the aim of exchanging political prisoners for loans from European Banks and the International Monetary Fund. This news went public after information leakage published by Reuters. Lukashenka turned out to have met with Bulgarian Foreign Minister Nikolai Mladenov in August. The Belarusian dictator had to appeal to Bulgaria after Italia and Lithuania, the countries official Minsk usually counted on before, had refused to participate in this undertaking. It is these countries that always spoke against imposing economic sanctions on the Belarusian regime.

So, Lukashenka promised Mladenov he would release all political prisoners by the middle of October. Naturally, not for free.

Pressure, bullying, threats

Prison gates were open only for 13 political prisoners. They are ordinary participants of the December 19 demonstration sentenced to 3 or 4 years in prison. The release of everyone was covered by Lukashenka’s press service underlining that all of them had applied for pardon to the president.

Lukashenka’s character of a scoundrel does not allow him to free innocent people for nothing. He needs to humiliate the “rioters” at first, announce they recognize him as the legitimate president and beg for mercy for their audacity to dispute his legitimacy.

Some of the released persons still refuse to talk to media, some say how they were made to sign these petitions. The scenario was the same. “Assault troops” of KGB officers landed in prison to have daily “explanatory conversations”. They pressed on prisoners reminding about old ill parents and said “everyone forgot you, all newspapers write only about the arrested presidential candidates, but you are gun fodder (It is KGB’s favourite trick. I heard this in the KGB jail, but after my release I learnt about the wave of solidarity all over the world).

If one was obstinate, meetings with family members, passing food parcels, delivering letters were forbidden and the prisoner was thrown into a punishment cell. Finally, some people surrendered and wrote pardon petitions under dictation of KGB officers.

“Do not make a hero or a traitor of me,” Andrei Pratasyenya, the just released former prisoner said. Nobody condemns him. No everyone can resist in this situation. We have no right to moralize.

Worker Dzmitry Daronin, who was freed some days ago, told journalists a prosecutor “calmed” him during the trial: “You are hostages. You will be sold if the authorities need money.”

The question is whether the West will fall for this “mercy” from Lukashenka. The European Union insists on the release of all political prisoners so far, not just certain persons. But who knows how long it will adhere to this position.

“I’ve heard this baloney that some people from the West welcomed this release. People face pressure, bullying and threats, but they welcome this. Stupid funny persons…” Zmitser Bandarenka, the head of Andrei Sannikov’s electoral team, writes bitterly in his latest letter.

Unbroken

No everyone can be broken. The presidential candidate and most active members of their teams are still behind bars facing the most sophisticated and cruel tortures.

When Dzimtry Uss refused to sign a pardon petition, a long-term meeting with his wife was suddenly reduced from three days to one.

The courage of 20-year-old Mikita Likhavid is worthy of admiration. He refused to confess his guilt and fulfill orders of the prison authorities. As a result, he is constantly being thrown either into a punishment cell or a special prison cell. Suffering from a number of diseases, he lost much waste, but remains firm: he is not going to repent.

Alyaksandr Atroshchankau, a spokesman for Andrei Sannikov, was given four years in a medium security penal colony in Vitsebsk. I was lucky to talk to him on the phone. The political prisoner phoned to his wife from prison, when I was near her. “I will not apply for pardon. I will spend there four years,” he said.

Presidential candidate and army officer Mikalai Statkevich works at timber mill in the Shklou penal colony. He told his lawyer that the colony authorities watch his every move restricting contacts with other prisoners and forbidding writing letter to his wife. But the politician continues to write. His private letters are read out to other prisoners for fun…

The mother of youth leader Zmitser Dashkevich died of heart attack when he was in prison… Now only his old father waits for him at home. Zmitser was placed into a punishment cell 8 times for his refusal to “mend his ways”. He told his lawyer about the humiliating treatment in prison: guards order him stand on foot in the corridor during the whole night and then say to go to work though almost fall down.

Zmitser Bandarenka, the head of Andrei Sannikov’s electoral campaign, does not write pardon petitions too. The 47-year-old politician underwent a serious spinal surgery. All doctors warn: he will become disabled for the rest of his life without rehabilitation.

Nevertheless, Bandarenka was transported in the Interior Ministry’s detention facility on a stretcher two weeks after the surgery and then sent to prison in Mahilou.

Sitting and bending is forbidden for Bandarenka. It means that he will have to stand from the “wake up” command at 6 in the morning till taps at 10 in the evening. But his discharge summary says clearly: “The patient needs post-operative rehabilitation for several months: leg massage, physical exercises when lying down, magnet therapy”.

There are not organizations able to help the political prisoners. Even the Red Cross washed its hands saying: “The Belarusian MFA informs that the patient receives all necessary medical aid.” It’s the same as asking Fidel about the health of dissidents dying from hunger strikes in his prisons…

Belarusian Vaclav Havel

When journalist Iryna Khalip came to prison to see her husband, presidential candidate Andrei Sannikov, she did not recognize him. Sanikov, 57, he shaved his head bald and even shaved off his beard he had worn for the last 40 years.

The intelligent and diplomat with a rank of extraordinary and plenipotentiary ambassador, a former deputy foreign minister of Belarus, Sannikov works at a factory producing corrugated carton boxes. It is unhealthy work, Andrei began to cough. He says everyone coughs here. The nearby shops produce soap and polyethylene…

Confinement conditions are very strict. One can be thrown into a punishment cell even for an unbuttoned button. Prisoners call Sannikov ‘president’. They are thankful for his electoral promise to review the cases of all unlawfully convicted people, who constitutes a majority in Belarusian prisons.

Sannikov met the most brutal crackdown from Lukashenka. Sannikov’s landslide was obvious and unquestionable at the polling stations where forgery was excluded, independent observers and human rights activists say.

In the KGB jail, the presidential candidate faced humiliating treatment by masked soldiers of an unknown detachment armed with truncheons and electroshock weapon. Over the entire period of interrogations, Sannikov had to sleep on the floor under the berth. He underwent humiliating searches, made undress, stand in a stretch out position, his arms twisted; his legs were hit with truncheons. He heard threats to his wife, the famous journalist arrested with him, and threats to send his three-year-old son to an orphanage.

Sannikov did not yield, did not write repentant letters. Imprisoned, he continues to demand holding new presidential elections without Lukashenka basing on democratic principles.

“Talks with Lukashenka are possible only on one issue – handover of power.

Breaking the vicious circle

Today’s situation in Belarus repeats the events in 2008. After imposing sanctions by the EU and the US and the worsened economic situation Lukashenka began to free political prisoners arrested during and after the 2006 presidential campaign. In early 2009, the dictatorship received an IMF loan, which saved it from default. The West was trying to change something in the Belarusian dictators during two years by inviting him to summits and the EU leaders descended to shake hands with the “last dictator of Europe”.

After the “bloody Sunday” of December 19 the situation develops with a clockwork precision. Lukashenka sells political prisoners amid economic crisis.

The main thing today is not to allow the dictator to play this game to the end. If he is again invited to Brussels offices after the release of prisoners of conscience, it will mean that Belarusians remain his hostages till the next presidential elections. And then again and again…

Natallia Radzina, exclusively for Novaya Gazeta (Russia)