Total sell-out of political prisoners

In the center of Europe dictator Lukashenka have been engaged in trade in humans for 17 years. Isn’t it a good idea to put an end to that finally?

Now we are witnessing incredible “mercy” of the KGB and the Interior Affairs Ministry again. Yesterday

my parents were informed about termination of one of the criminal cases opened against me in Belarus.

The document was sent to home address. They didn’t even need to go to the post office with IDs, as it usually happened every time when I received another run-around from law-enforcing agencies. They have been in a great hurry and decided to dispense with formalities.

“The good news” was received from captain Dyshchenka from the Investigation department of preliminary investigation of the Main Directorate of Internal Affairs of Minsk city executive committee.

“You are informed that proceedings in the criminal case # 1001110362 opened against Natallya Radzina on charges related Article 293 of the Criminal Code of Belarus (committing mass riots) on December 20, 1010, has been terminated by a decree on August 23, 2011 for absence of crime in the act. The ruling on termination of criminal prosecution can be appealed against at the prosecutor of Minsk.

Senior investigator of the Preliminary Investigation branch of the Main Directorate of the Interior Affairs of Minsk city executive committee, police captain D. Dyshchenka”

Thanks a bunch, captain Dyshchenka. Having heard this text from my mom on the phone, in my joy I was ready to run in the direction of the Belarusian border. But I timely recalled that after a month and a half in prison your colleagues from the Interior Affairs Ministry and the KGB didn’t return me my passport, so our dear border guards can fail to recognize me. And then lawyers called me and poured cold water on me.

Termination of the criminal case under Article 293 of the Criminal Code (“Mass riots”), they said, does not mean that the criminal case on charges related Article 342 of the Criminal Code (“Participation in group actions violating public order”) is dismissed. As is known, the criminal case for “mass riots” has been also closed against Zmitser Bandarenka, Iryna Khalip, Anastasiya Palazhanka, Uladzimir Nyaklyaeu, Andrei Dzmitryeu, Alyaksandr Fyaduta, Vital Rymasheuski, Syarhei Vaznyak, Paval Sevyarynets, Syarhei Martsaleu, but a new one was initiated later.

And Bandarenka runs the hazard of becoming a disabled person in Mahilyou penal colony, Sevyarynets loads boxes in a compulsory labour facility, and all others received suspended or conditional sentences and stay under strict supervision and constant pressure on the part of the KGB. And no one will inform me about opening a new criminal case, my lawyer said. When you will arrive here, you will find that for yourself.

Besides, I have many other questions to the current authorities. Here are just some of them:

Have the three criminal cases opened in 2010 following publishing articles on charter97.org been closed?

Who among the KGB and the IAM representatives would offer me apologies for beating me on the square when I was covering the rally of December 19, the month and a half spent in the KGB prison, in a cell without a toilet, where I was sleeping on the cold floor on planks in winter, for night interrogations, pressure, blackmailing and threats? Maybe the chairman of the KGB Zaitsau (Zajtsev), who had threatened to the presidential candidate Andrei Sannikov to murder his wife and son, would do that himself? Or maybe the KGB colonel who said that I would be released from the prison in about 5 years, and I would not be able to have children as I would lose my health there completely?

Will anyone from the KGB or the Interior Affairs Ministry apologize to my mother, who had been bringing heavy bags with food for me to the remand prison, though she has troubles with her legs; who is dry-eyed; whose heart has become completely weak while I was in prison and in exile under strict supervision expecting the court?

Who would apologize to my parents for the search in their house after my departure, and to my nephew whose computer had been seized, who were invited for interrogations in an effort to find out who of them could have taken me out of the country?

Who will apologize to charter97.org volunteers, who were arrested on December 20 overnight and imprisoned for 15 days just for working in the editorial office with me?

When 19 computers seized during the searches in my flat and in the editorial office of charter97.org within 2010?

And finally, how many criminal cases have been initiated while I am working abroad? How many years of imprisonment I face just for one headline, “Patient hasn’t regained senses”? For calling your brutalities – brutalities, for our calling tortures tortures, and for calling Lukashenka a dictator?

To what prison term would I be sentenced for urging Europe to impose economic sanctions against Lukashenka’s regime? When I left prison, after the first article with such a call policemen arrived to me and took me to Kobryn branch of the KGB, where a police investigator from Minsk warned me that one more call for imposing sanctions, and I will land in prison again. Then I was given my “wolf ticket” – I was prohibited to write articles which include “evaluative judgments.”

And how many years could I receive for confirming the fact that people were tortured in the KGB prison? The Military Prosecutor’s Office is holding “investigation” now certainly. But those who were giving evidence about tortures, had been given a document with a warning about criminal responsibility for “deliberately misleading denunciation”. It is well-known how Abwehr can investigate tortures by Gestapo. So are we going to become “deliberately misleading denunciators” after the end of the “investigation”?

And as a final point, when the KGB and IAM will carry out independent investigation of the death of my colleague, the founder of charter97.org Aleh Byabanin (Oleg Bebenin) and find the murderer who had falsified evidence presenting the crime as a suicide?

There are many questions, but I’m afraid that there would be no answer from these people and these authorities.

Lukashenka’s regime is dying without money and is ready to sell us to the West again and again.

Anatol Lyabedzka was so glad that one of the criminal cases against him had been dismissed, and he even called himself a winner. But I do not feel as a winner in this situation, I feel as a human commodity, which someone had decided to sell in exchange for the benevolence of the West, expressed in current money of loans which are so necessary today.

I hope the West would not fall for that, as dozens of political prisons are remaining in prisons, and there was no crime in their “acts” as well! Andrei Sannikov, Zmitser Bandarenka, Alyaksandr Atroshchankau, Fiodar Mirzayanau, Mikita Likhavid, Mikalai Statkevich, Illya Vasilevich, Dzmitry Vus, Andrei Pratasenya, Zmitser Dashkevich and many others are still in prisons. Today they are pressurized and make to write petitions for pardon – to sell them to the West as well, but first they want to bring them to their knees. And then to arrest them again and again, as in this or that way, they are getting in the way of the dictator who wants to go on sitting on his throne.

That’s how officials of the European Union are going round in a circle with Lukashenka for all these 17 years, forgetting that he is an impostor, who is retaining the power with the help of arms.

Who can guarantee that on my return to the motherland I would not be arrested again for my work as the editor of charter97.org website? Or that my colleagues and friends Fiodar Paulyuchenka, Mikalai Khalezin, Natallya Kolyada, Pavel Marynich, Yauhen Afnagel, would not be arrested? Their flats were searched on December 20 overnight. Special services have been searching for them all these months, and their families were terrorized. Have criminal cases against them been opened or dismissed?

Or are they trying to entice us into Belarus, like emigrants were enticed in the Soviet times, when they were told that complete freedom reigns in the Evil Empire, and a picture “Prodigal fault-finders have realised their mistake and return” was painted for the West?

The Communists once enticed Maxim Gorky, who quietly worked on the island of Capri, to the Soviet Union. After that Gorky died under mysterious circumstances very soon. Until his death the writer was under heavy supervision of the NKVD, and even a great friend of the Soviet Union Louis Aragon could not get permission to meet with him.

But he story I like most is about Ivan Bunin. He was promised that he would be met with bell-ringing in the Soviet Union. And Bunin answered to that: “Bell-ringing is prohibited in your country…”

Natallya Radzina