Pavel Seviarynets: We Must Not Turn Blind Eye To Political Prisoners

Today in Belarus there appeared the necessity to hold a campaign of solidarity with prisoners of conscience once again.

Co-Chairman of the steering committee for creating the party “Belarusian Christian Democracy” Pavel Seviarynets has told this in an interview to charter97.org.

– You were a moderator at the forum “Freedom to Political Prisoners”. Could you please tell about this event in details?

– This is not the first time we organize such discussions, when there occur cases of extremely acute repressions – people are sent to prison. We get together to elaborate an algorithm just how we can help these people, how we can support them, starting from legal and organizational moments and finishing with international aspects.

This meeting got the name “Freedom to Political Prisoners”. We organize similar events several times a year. In the recent months, the situation has been quite a paradox – the so-called “elections” are in progress, the so-called “liberalization” is in bloom, but the people go to prison one after another, the people get fines for participation in peaceful actions, and then the authorities seize their property for non-payment the fines. This is outrageous, especially in a situation when European politicians keep coming and talking with the regime’s representatives about changing the format of the so-called “elections” and the so-called “liberalization”. It can’t happen like this.

This is exactly why we decided to have a meeting. The forum was quite broad; there were the opposition parties’ activists, human rights defenders, and political prisoners’ relatives among the participants.

– So why do human rights defenders and the international community remain so silent about such big number of political prisoners in Belarus?

– This is hard to tell. I think there is a certain passivity of thinking. Human rights defenders set up the criteria for themselves, basing on the previous political cases. So, acknowledging a person a political prisoner is happening in a rather odd way now. Why, for example, is Eduard Palchys not a political prisoner? Who can explain this? Even lawyers find it hard to understand. Basically, even Lukashenka recognized, for example, Yauhen Vaskovich a political prisoner, having released him together with the other political prisoners under one decision, at one moment. After that, the Europeans and the international community recognized him as a prisoner of conscience. The society demands these people should be released. This is absolutely natural and logical. We need to make up our minds and decide, whether we play with the regime and part of the Europeans the game called “liberalization”, turning a blind eye to everything, pretending everything is alright, and we have “elections”, and positive changes are allegedly happening… Or we open our eyes and tell what we see: nothing has changed.

– How is it possible to achieve release of political prisoners in the current conditions?

– The least we can do is to write letters of support, participate in solidarity actions, lend a shoulder to the political prisoners’ relatives and inform the international community. We need to say we have political prisoners at every meeting with Europeans. If they think there are no prisoners of conscience in Belarus now, they are very wrong.

Europeans should set a condition before Lukashenka: release those people of we won’t even talk to you. Then there will be hope that the issue will be solved within several days. The people will be released in several days. Today, Europe does have the levers of influence, and, surely, they should use these levers, at least to set these people free. We are not talking about any bargains, like, we give you loans and you release political prisoners. It must not happen like this. If there are political prisoners – no dialogue. No political prisoners – fine, let’s talk about something else. This should be the condition for the dialogue.

– The observers from the OSCE mission, who are working in Minsk during this year’s “elections” to the “house of representatives”, also attended the forum. What actions will they take?

– First, it is the report the OSCE is preparing. This report upon the “elections” results considers the whole atmosphere, the overall situation in the country. If there are political prisoners, but the elections go successfully, then freedom and fairness of these “elections” is doubtful since the very start. The people stay behind the bars for their political convictions, and other people are pretending that there is some “democratic process” going on here at the same time.

Secondly, the OSCE observers meet with representatives of the government and, of course, they have to ask questions, why do you have people in prisons because of their political opinions, and how it complies with your declarations, with the OSCE charter. Therefore, the presence of the OSCE mission remains a strong lever. I think that the process of the political prisoners’ release will go faster since the international observers start working here.