Vasil Parfiankou: I was promised to be given no peace in Belarus

The authorities are ready to hurl any dissenter into prison.

The former political prisoner, Vasil Parfiankou, has been released today. He has served his third term in a penal colony since 2010.

- Part of your term has been spent in the colony #9 in Horki by you. Earlier Zmitser Dashkevich was kept there. What was an attitude to you there? Was it different from an attitude to ordinary prisoners?

- I can say one thing: Dashkevich is still remembered there well. And personally by the administration of the penal colony. When I was received by the head of the colony, all senior officers of the colony were there, and they told me: “It is not a health resort here. You must be ready for that.” I said that I am prepared. There was not a pressure, but a kind of fault-finding on their part. If a usual prisoner were in my place, the one convicted for a criminal offense, they would turn a blind eye to some things. And I was punished for every minor act: for sitting in a wrong place, for looking in a wrong direction – I was immediately punished by several days in an isolation call, punishment cell and so on. I got used to that, and it could not influence my general state any more, it was just a nuisance and an annoying incident for me.

- Will you be put under police supervision after release? Have there been any demands on the part of law-enforcing agencies concerning your public activities after release?

- Yes, I have been put under police supervision for a year. There have not been any particular demands. But they made it clear that I would not be left alone and allowed to live and work unworriedly. “It would be better for you to leave somewhere,” they say. And I answered: “Where can I go? It’s my land, my house!”

- Due to your public activities you had been placed to a forced labour and medical centre (LTP) even before the arrest in the criminal case. In May 2013 another opposition activist, Zmitser Palienka, was threatened with the same punishment. In the run-up to the World Championship in Minsk, according to reports of opposition activists and human rights watchdogs, hundreds of homeless from Minsk were sent to medical and forced labour rehabilitation centres. Could it be concerned that such centres are tools of crackdown? Is the stay of hundreds of thousands people in such centres justifiable?

- You know, it’s an old Soviet legacy. I do not know whether it is crackdown or not, but it is far from being treatment for sure. People are not treated there at all! People just work there, they have a usual 8-hour working day, at a construction for instance, for token wages. There wages are extremely low, for example, 1 mln per month. They are simply low-paid manpower. Maybe this method is useful in some cases, for instance, for drunkards who gather near shops every day. They should be probably hidden from common people somehow, but there are many people in such centres who could have been left here. They are inmates simply because they can work. In fact, such people are used as slaves.

- What is your evaluation of the situation in the country, considering that the next year is a year of the presidential “election”?

- It is obvious that the pressure on pro-democracy activists does not stop. We see that new political prisoners appear. For example, I know that Yury Rubtsou has been sentenced to a term in a corrective labour facility (khimiya) for alleged “insult of a judge”. And the events takning place during the hockey championship, are certainly a disgrace for the Belarusian authorities, such things should not take place in a European country – and they are trying to position Belarus in this way. Such things should be fought against, something should be changed, as it is impossible to live in this way. Certainly, I don’t wish it to happen in the same way as in Ukraine, with blood, war… But I do not know… We are going to invent how to continue our struggle.

- You probably know that pressure upon opposition activists continues. Recently it was reported that Paval Vinahradau was forced to leave Minsk. People are detained in the run up to every major protest rally. How could one fight in such conditions?

- Belarus needs total reform of the court system, of criminal and administrative code. Many articles should be simply crossed out, as people are imprisoned for nothing in fact. Even when I was in the penal colony, I saw many people who could have been left in the society, not isolated from it. They have made some economic transgressions for instance… It would be better for them to be punished by working for the state, for instance, if they are technical engineering personnel. We should approach this, but under the present regime people who are trying to do and say something are kept in fear. The best people of Belarus are presented as alcoholics – I had this situation with a medical and labour centre, Paval Vinahradau is threatened in the same way now. He leaves for Byarezina to his father now, I do not know whether it will help or not. I hope he will stay at large, but if they want to isolate him, they are going to do so. The same is true for any of us, for those who are fighting for the truth.

- What policy of democratic countries towards Belarus should be pursued for political prisoners to be released?

- It is obvious that the European countries and the US have started to be lenient towards Lukashenka now, on the grounds that Lukashenka is pretending to be a kind of a peacemaker in the situation in Ukraine. The issue of political prisoners is not talked about so much in European countries and in the European parliament any more. It is necessary for this issue to stay on the agenda. It should be shouted about, not kept silent about. At present Belarus is the only country in Europe, where people are hurled into prisons just for their fight for a decent life.