The Decembrists' Time

Political prisoners support us even from behind bars.

December is the darkest time in prison. The lack of freedom (not metaphysical but the simplest - the right to go left or right) plus the daylight hours as big as a donut hole and the memories of the city behind the thick walls, which is being decorated with garlands and lights, of the streets through which compatriots bring Christmas trees, of the porches that smell of tangerines and pine, of one's life in one of these houses makes life unbearable and dreary.

These days, Alena Lazarchik is waiting for a transfer to the Homel penal colony. It's possible she will spend the New Year's Eve in a Stolypin's carriage. The Supreme Court upheld her eight-year sentence. It was an unusual situation, when the relatives breathed out almost with relief, because the prosecution appealed the verdict, as did the defense, only it demanded another year to the term. When the sentence came into force, Alena's daughter Marina immediately received permission to visit her and rushed to Mahiliou. She failed to get to the detention center (this is another amazing feature of the Belarusian torture art: a resident of one city goes to the detention center of another city so that the relatives have to carry parcels 200-300 kilometers away): Alena was in a punishment cell. Then, when Lazarchik was released from the punishment cell, and Marina returned to Mahiliou, they met. Alena never complained even about the unbearable conditions in the punishment cell. She just smiled and said, "I'm fine".

Alena Lazarchik is the kind of person who will laugh and shout "it doesn't hurt me!" under torture. She keeps all female inmates in good spirits (by the way, the ratio there is significant: six out of eight are political). And remakes well-known songs on a topical way. She even got a funny nickname - Peredelkina. Well, the prison sings softly the famous "Black Cat" by Saulsky: "The song is not about how people do not get along with the cop". The whole text is remade this way. Alena supports the entire cell, her relatives. She tells them in letters and when they visit her that everything is fine even when she was in the punishment cell.

And Palina Sharenda-Panasiuk is now in solitary confinement. She would stay there till summer. She was taken there for six months. And when Palina was first brought after the second trial and sentence to penal colony No. 24 in Zarechche, she did not spend even a few hours in quarantine: they came for her immediately and took her to the punishment cell, where she spent 40 days. The detainee who has been recently released from that colony recounted how the head of the unit came to Palina after a while to get acquainted and talk to her. Palina just refused to talk to her. She said: "You're not my boss. You didn't hire me."

She said it in a Duchess tone, with a similar turn of her head. Indeed, even in the freezing cell of the punishment cell, deprived of warm clothes, books, letters, even paper with a pencil, she continues her fight for dignity and the right to despise them - those who follow orders and mock political prisoners. And she wins. Every other day spent in the punishment cell, every month in the solitary confinement cell, every deprivation of a parcel or a phone call is a stone in the podium of her victory.

In fact, I am not writing about it so that you and I, who are still at large, can feel guilty before the political prisoners, saying that they are suffering there, while we buy Christmas trees and put glass balls on them. No, that's not what I mean. It's just that it's obvious that we must support our heroes. But it turns out that they support us with their strength, their unbreakable dignity, their resilience. They send us their poems and funny drawings, write fairy tales and songs, send us greetings and assurances that everything is all right. They try to take care of us, as if we were in prison and they were at large. Perhaps they are right.

Political prisoners will have no Christmas tree, no gifts in rustling foil, no clinking of glasses. But at least all of us can send them greeting cards. So that there would be a lot of postcards from different cities and villages, from strangers, with wishes for a Happy New Year. Believe me, it's more valuable than any box in foil and a case of Veuve Clicquot. And the box will wait for its day.

Iryna Khalip, specially for Charter97.org

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