Aliaksandar Atroschankau: The worst about prison is not the routines, but the lost time

The former political prisoner tells about his confinement.

Amnesty International recognized Aliaksandar Atroschankau a prisoner of conscience. Lukashenka released him on 14 September 2011, under an international pressure. Aliaksandar told the Ukrainian Tidzhen about humiliations and other trials that the “politicals” have to go through in Belarusian jails.

During the Belarusian presidential election 2010, journalist and public figure Aliaksandar Atroschankau was press-secretary of former presidential candidate Andrei Sannikov. Aliaksandar was arrested the day after the rallies against the falsified election results, and sentenced to a 4-year prison term in the reformatory Vitsba-3. Earlier he had been expelled from the International Relations Department of the Belarusian State University for his political engagement. In 2001-2006 Aliaksandar was a member of the ZUBR movement, then an organizer of the civic campaign European Belarus where he worked as a press-secretary.

After Lukashenka accused his political opponents of promoting the sanctions recently imposed by the EU, the politicians were prohibited to leave the country. In spring 2012 Atroschankau was on his way to Moscow to give an interview and then leave for Brussels for a meeting at the European Commission. However, Aliaksandar and two other Belarusian oppositionists were taken off the train Minsk-Moscow in Vorsha and fined for minor hooliganism following a trial.

Aliaksandar Atroschankau told the Ukrainian magazine about his confinement after the presidential election:

- I read - Bradberry, Azimov, I studied, played basket, watched Star Wars. Until 2010 I never thought of myself as a politician. In the youth movement ZUBR I demanded faire election and liberation of political prisoners, and didn’t consider it to be politics. The first rally I took part in was when Yury Zakharanka disappeared, then Viktar Ganchar and Anatol Krasouski. It became clear that the country is moving in a completely wrong direction. At that time I studied international relations and realized that the situation in the country was only getting worse. And my future profession was becoming useless. I realized then that I must do everything to stop politicians and patriots from disappearing. I must be at rallies, spread information, talk to people. Every citizen is responsible for what is happening in the country.

I started to work with politics in 2010, when I became press-secretary of Andrei Sannikov who was a presidential candidate at that time. It was natural for me: if a house is burning you take a bucket of water and try to put out the fire. If people are murdered for politics, you do what you can to change something.

During that year, Belarusians’ incomes decreased by three times. But there was no particular discontent. People are too scared of the special services and the police. Probably only North Korean police per capita rate is higher than in Belarus.

When on 19 December 2010 I went to the square, I knew I could be arrested. I was there with decent people, friends, who were brave enough to demand a better fate for their country.

The works by Shalamov, Solzhenitsyn, who wrote about labor camps, turned out to be a good preparation for the reformatory where I spent half a year. But a confinement always changes one’s priorities. So I don’t think that it was possible to prepare for the arrest and prison. There are general rules, but still it is a completely new experience. There’s no manual. It is just another individual experience, like birth or death. There is no way to describe it in words.

Every day during the arrest in the KGB isolation cell I had to go through painful and humiliating physical procedures. They would order me to take my belongings, madras, bed sheets and pillows to the empty gym. I had to walk through a column of masked people. In the gym, they would tell me I’d been too slow, turn me around and make me jog back and forth with a 25-kilogram load seven times. Then they would order me to stretch my feet and arms and to stand like that facing the wall. They would open the window, -15 – 25 degrees outside. I had to stand naked, nearly in the splits. I felt them approaching me from behind, pushing with batons, clicking with electric shockers. This would go on for 40 minutes, one hour. I felt them breathing in the back of my neck, laughing, swearing.

Then a police officer would arrive and ask how I felt. He’d say, “Why are you doing so, you know very well that you can change everything. You can be home for the New Year, celebrating with your family – they miss you a lot. It is up to you. Be frank with the investigator.” They wanted me to testify against Sannikov. I refused to say anything without my lawyer, who wasn’t allowed to visit me. “Your position is destructive. You hurt yourself.” They suggested telling a lie about other Belarusian politicians – Dzmitry Bandarenka, Mikalay Statkievich. “Write a letter if you don’t want to talk” or “Let’s share what we know. You’re free to leave and do what you did, and we’ll be helping you.” They did their best to make me compromise my conscience.

When the wife of Dzmitry Bandarenka, another political prisoner, thanked me for not testifying against her husband, I didn’t accept her gratitude. How could I possibly lie about a person that I’ve been together in our struggle for freedom for more than ten years?

They insisted that everyone forgot about me:”Your wife is so light-headed. She’ll wait for couple of years, not more.” And once a KGB guard “squealed” what my wife said: “He’ll stay there as long as he has to”, which he thought was a prove of her betrayal.

I never admitted guilt and was confined to four years in a reformatory. I had a feeling that I’d have to serve at least these four years. But I felt support and I knew that my family and friends were fighting for me, and it helped.

The reformatory was a special place. Every third prisoner used to work for the special services: special purpose units, customs officers. The rest were domestic murders, drug-addicts and alcoholics. So there were no specific unofficial prison rules.

As everywhere in Belarus, there were many people who got unfair or unreasonably severe sentences. Nearly all cases had major procedural violations. Judges often accept the resolutions that the police suggests. People get 8 years for something which is not even considered an administrative violation in other countries. We live only once, and I think that a person can be confined to 8 years in prison only for something really grave. The worst is that once you’re in prison, you depend totally on semi-literate guards.

In prison, there are only few supporters of the regime, the majority hates it. During all my time there I heard something positive about Lukashenka only once and probably because the pre-term liberation of this prisoner would be considered in a couple of days.

It didn’t take long for me to adapt. There are many minor routine issues that need to be solved, and it helps. From the very beginning I started to count time left till my release: two weeks was 1% of the entire term. Behind the bars, days are long but weeks are short.

I tried to reproduce what was happening outside basing on those few pieces of information that I could get indirectly – for example, from a political text in a sports newspaper. If even sports papers write about politics, then something is happening in the country.

The worst thing in prison is not the routines, but the lost time and the useless skills that you get. After prison, I started to notice others’ bad habits, like gluttony or alcohol abuse. In prison, any weakness can be used against you.

It is hard to wake up when you dream of home. You open your eyes and see shaved strangers. I know that in Ukraine there are people confined for their views. There is no secret recipe for helping political prisoners; what is needed is support, publicity, struggle at all levels, national and global.

For prisoners, it is important to feel that their work wasn’t pointless. We cannot let the powers to break the law. We must take each case to the surface, and press those who break the law through publicity. The families of the prisoners need solidarity, showed even through small, everyday things.