Ales Bialiatski presents book The Cold Wing Of Motherland in Warsaw

The book was prepared when the human rights defender in prison and published after his release.

Ales Bialiatski, the head of Viasna human rights centre and Vice President of the International Federation for Human Rights, presented his book The Cold Wing of Motherland in the Belarusian House in Warsaw.

The human rights defender began the presentation on May 28 with the information about human rights violations in Belarus.

“The human rights situation in Belarus is not improving. Yury Rubtsou has been tried and sentenced to 2 years of imprisonment. It is his personal resistance that began with innocent things. Yury wore a t-shirt reading 'Lukashenka, go away' and received 15 days in custody that further led to 1.5 years in an open-type correctional facility and 2 years of imprisonment. You can see that if someone tries to resist, it grows into serious things,” he said.

The Cold Wing of Motherland consists of memoirs, extracts from letter and essays that were not included in Ales's previous book.

“I didn't decide what would be included in the book. It was the continuation of my previous book Enlightened by Belarus, which mostly consisted of my literary essays. About 100 pages of that book were written in prison. My colleagues from Viasna human rights centre proposed to publish the book. My colleague Palina Stsepanenka selected texts.. She listened to my advice, but her work was rather independent. She said: 'Ales, some of your political essays were not included in the literary book. Let's publish them later.' I answered: 'Palina, I think I should write 100-200 pages more, and we will publish the book.' So, 200 pages written when I was in jail in Babruisk.

The book is a collection of extracts from letters with literary essays that were not included in my previous book. It also contains memoirs of the 1980s. What makes these texts a book? They are about the national movement, the new revival that began here in the 1970s. I joined the movement in 1981 at the age of 19. I was involved in the events that have been happening in Belarus from the beginning of the national and democratic movement till the recent times. I described my experience. This is the common idea that holds the texts together. This is what I have written for 25 years,” the author said.

The presentation was a symbolic display of solidarity with political prisoners. A letter writing marathon “Send a postcard to Belarus” was held to sign postcards to Belarusian political inmates.