Sexual Harassment In Belarusian Style

Recently, the scandal around the American producer Harvey Weinstein is actively discussed in the world.

However, in Belarus such cases for women sometimes end much more tragic.

Radio Racyja was the first to report the case of paramedic from Navahradak Tatsiana Vaitovich, who suffered from sexual harassment from her boss and was put in the mental hospital for the denial to yield to the pressure.

The editor’s office of the Charter97.org decided to figure everything out in this incident, and asked civil activist, volunteer of the forum “Freedom to Political Prisoners!” Volha Nikalaichyk, who helped Tatsiana Vaitovich to share the details of this scandalous case.

— Could you tell us in details, what happened to paramedic Tatsiana Vaitovich?

— I met Tatsiana Vaitovich in the autumn of 2016. She came to me with Katsiaryna Sadouskaya, whom she met at the Ministry of Health, where she came to the reception. The women got to talking and then decided to come to my house. Hearing Tatsiana’s story, I immediately began to write about her on Facebook. Katsiaryna Sadouskaya and I tried to help her.

The situation that happened to Tatsiana is horrible, it’s a real quintessence of the general situation with human rights in Belarus. She worked in the Navahradak hospital in the laboratory as a paramedic for 20 years. Everything was fine, until physician P.S. (the initials have been changed — Charter97.org) He began to harass Tatsiana, who is a bright beautiful woman, sings well, performs at many events. P.S. began to harass her, making obscene suggestions, and when she did not agree to a relationship, the baiting began.

In addition, Tatsiana became aware of some corruption schemes in the hospital, and she began to talk about it publicly.

In response, P.S. decided to get her into a mental hospital, using his connections in the psychiatric hospital in Navahradak. That is, it was not a problem for P.S. to put Tatsiana in an ambulance vehicle to take her to the psychiatric hospital for examination.

Despite the confirmed diagnosis, the woman was sent to the mental hospital for forcible treatment several times.

By the way, Tatsiana went to complain to Vasil Zharko when he was Minister of Health. So, Zharko sent letters to the Navahradak hospital, so that Tatsiana Vaitovich was reinstated at work, because she was fired on the grounds that she had allegedly been sick with epilepsy, which was untrue.

The demand of Minister Zharko was ignored. You know, I have a feeling that the Navahradak hospital is a private institution of P.S. and no one can make him obey. He continued to harass Tatsiana. At events where she wanted to perform, he ran after her and shouted: “You're not going to sing!”. He seized the equipment, pulled out the cords from the sockets. So who is sick here? P.S. used foul laguage with regard to Tatsiana, he even applied physical force to her. That's how they tortured a woman who brings up her son alone.

However, Tatsiana is terrific, she did not obey, did not give up and went to the authorities. She came to us, human rights activists. We constantly go around the ministries, because Tatsiana's case is not the only one, we have women in every regional center who did not surrender and declared war against lawlessness. And punishment for them is very tough — punitive psychiatry, which is a favorite Soviet, NKVDist way of suppressing dissenters. We remember that many dissidents in the USSR went through this. And, unfortunately, in our country it continues. As a result, the diagnosis says that a person has schizophrenia of the second degree. The result is that they will not hire them anywhere else.

By the way, Tatsiana had an appointment with First Deputy Minister of Health Dzmitry Pinevich a few days ago. She warned him that she was suing, because they completely ignored her written appeals. They responded formally, and then wrote: “The correspondence is terminated.” This is outrageous, officials are obliged to answer! They are servants of the people. So Tatsiana went to the Ministry and said: “You are the servants, and I am the people”.

— How did you solve her situation?

—We will say that the problem is resolved when Tatsiana is reinstated at work, and those who tortured her fpor a long period of time are punished.

Tatsiana periodically met with Zharko, but it was after the acquaintance with me and Sadouskaya, that the minister began to respond to the woman’s appeals, letters began to come from him. I think social networks and independent media played a role here.

Tatsiana Vaitovich was persecuted for many years because she did not yield to sexual harassment, illegal dismissal, deprivation of freedom and began to fight. You know, the fact that Tatsiana confronted the system so bravely is something so important that you need to shout about it! This is an example for the people, showing that one should not be afraid to defend their rights, fight, turn to the independent media. Because the authorities crossed the line.