Prominent Belarus human rights defender and Nobel laureate Ales Byalyatski knew it was coming. His activist colleagues had been being harassed and arrested. He simply did not know when.
In July 2021, that day got here for the founder and longtime head of the Vyasna (Spring) Human Rights Center when he was arrested amid an unprecedented crackdown that adopted mass protests towards the disputed 2020 presidential election that many in Belarus and overseas have mentioned was rigged.
“We talked then about leaving Belarus,” Byalyatski instructed RFE/RL’s Belarus Service days after lastly being launched from a Belarusian jail on December 13 in a US-brokered deal that noticed a complete of 123 prisoners free of detention by authoritarian ruler Aleksandr Lukashenko.
“But I felt that as the top of a corporation already below repression, it could be fallacious to flee. Our volunteers had been being jailed, our colleagues had been being focused. We needed to keep and take the blow collectively.”
The 63-year-old rights defender described his detention — which lasted some 4 1/2 years — as each a private ordeal and a continuation of his life’s work: bearing witness to repression.
“Imagine watching tv debates about whether or not somebody like Donald Trump would possibly win the Nobel Peace Prize, whereas a Nobel laureate is sitting beside you on a jail bench,” — Ales Byalyatski
Byalyatski mentioned he was mentally ready for arrest. Having beforehand served time in a Minsk detention heart in 2011, his return to jail felt like what he known as “deja vu.”
What he didn’t anticipate was the size of his imprisonment. He was sentenced to 10 years.
According to Byalyatski, the extended detention was influenced by exterior occasions, most notably Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in late February 2022.
That was launched, partly, from Belarusian territory, and pushed inside repression in Belarus out of the worldwide highlight, permitting the regime to harden its methods, in response to Byalyatski.
“We turned hostages,” he mentioned. “Political prisoners in Belarus will not be extraordinary inmates. We are nearer to prisoners of conflict.”
Continuity In Captivity
Byalyatski careworn that Vyasna’s management anticipated arrests and ready for continuity.
Younger workers members relocated overseas and instantly resumed work, opening the group’s first international workplace within the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius. While imprisoned rights defenders couldn’t function within the conventional sense, he mentioned their incarceration itself turned a type of testimony.
“The presence of human rights defenders and journalists in jail is the clearest indicator that democracy not exists there,” he mentioned. “Our imprisonment confirmed the true state of Belarus.”
Byalyatski drew parallels with the Stalin-era repression of Belarusian intellectuals within the Nineteen Twenties and Nineteen Thirties, stressing that historical past had “come full circle,” even when situations right this moment differ from these of a century in the past.
Nobel Peace Prize Behind Bars
Byalyatski was reviewing supplies in his felony case when he discovered that he had been collectively awarded the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize together with Russian rights group Memorial and Ukraine’s Center For Civil Liberties. A fellow detainee first talked about the information in a hall. His lawyer later confirmed it.
“I used to be shocked,” he mentioned. “I by no means thought in regards to the Nobel Prize. But I understood instantly that it was not a private award.”
“This is a Soviet system designed to interrupt individuals. It applies to all prisoners, however political detainees are focused with explicit cruelty.” — Ales Byalyatski
He described the prize as symbolic recognition of the Belarusian protest motion and of human rights defenders in Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine. Like previous awards given to figures corresponding to Andrei Sakharov, Byalyatski mentioned the Nobel Prize highlighted systemic violations relatively than particular person achievement.
Among fellow inmates, the information was met with quiet respect.
“Imagine watching tv debates about whether or not somebody like Donald Trump would possibly win the Nobel Peace Prize, whereas a Nobel laureate is sitting beside you on a jail bench,” he mentioned. “It was surreal.”
Prison authorities, nonetheless, handled him no in a different way. He mentioned he was subjected to routine humiliation, searches, and disciplinary reprimands and punishments — 23 in whole — for minor infractions corresponding to unpolished sneakers or failing to greet an officer.
“Upon launch, they confiscated the whole lot,” Byalyatski mentioned. “My letters, my diary, greater than 300 pages of notes and memoirs. All destroyed.”
Harsh Prison Conditions
While he mentioned he was not bodily tortured, Byalyatski described situations he considers inhumane: extended isolation, chilly cells, sleep deprivation, and punishment cells the place detainees had been pressured to stay standing for hours.
“This is a Soviet system designed to interrupt individuals,” he mentioned. “It applies to all prisoners, however political detainees are focused with explicit cruelty.”
“More than 1,000 political prisoners stay behind bars,” Byalyatski added. “This system releases some and arrests others. It is countless, for now.”
Despite his ordeal, Byalyatski stays cautiously optimistic. He believes repression can not extinguish Belarusian society’s demand for dignity and justice.
“The solely factor that also works in Belarus is the individuals,” he mentioned. “This is a darkish interval, however it is usually a interval of resistance.”
