We’ll Recall Every Single Bastard

Quills will become dull and the gadgets’ memory will be exceeded.

Palina Sharenda-Panasiuk was finally taken to Minsk. The distance from colony No. 24 to the Belarusian capital city is less than 300 kilometres. Palina was travelling for 18 days this three hundred kilometers. What were they doing with her all this time, where did they take her or where were they keeping her? We do not know. They say that she is in a pre-trial detention centre on Valadarski Street, and they were going to send her to Navinki psychiatric center. But they did not accept a parcel for Palin in the pre-trial detention center. And no one else knows more.

This uncertainty is the worst torture for relatives and friends of prisoners. She should be allowed phone calls, visits and meetings with a lawyer. She has her right. Everything is indicated in documents, officials signed them and sealed them with state seals. But there is nothing in reality, and there is no one to ask. I mean, no one to take the responsibility. And there is no longer any certainty that your imprisoned loved one is healthy or even alive. And the more time passes in this uncertainty, the more terrible.

More than two months have passed since the last information about Viktar Babaryka. Since those very April days, when one of the medics from the Navapolatsk hospital managed to whisper that the political prisoner had been brought to them, there has been not a single word, not a single call, nor a single letter. It looks like he did not go to prison from the hospital bed but simply disappeared - vanished into thin air. Then, however, a faint hope arose when it became known that he was included in the list of witnesses at the trial in the case of Eduard Babaryka. Now they will bring them together and they will be able to see each other despite their imprisonment. At least we all will know that Viktar is alive. But the trial is almost over, the verdict will be announced next week, all the witnesses spoke, but Babaryka Sr was never brought there. One can imagine how hard it is for those who are behind bars, and for those who go crazy on the other side of the bars. But as for Viktar and Eduard Babaryka, I can’t even imagine which of them is having a harder time right now. Viktar or Edward? And, by the way, Maryna or Mikalai?

Yes, Maryna Adamavich has known nothing about her husband Mikalai Statkevich for 140 days. Almost five months. “Correspondence is not forbidden,” the prison punishers said. She writes letters to her husband that disappear into the endless stone corridors. Complaints, statements, requests. She makes an appointment with the authorities and they tell her that everything is ok. Where are the letters? So he probably just doesn't want to text you. Why didn't you let the lawyer? So he probably didn't write an application for the meeting with the lawyer. No calls? So this, dear, is just a penalty. There is a photo on Maryna's Facebook page, she and Mikalai are happy and laughing, well-fed cats climb on Statkevich's knee. I imagine that holiday when one of the guests accidentally made a picture of them. It was about four or five years ago. I am not sure. In any case, it was between the end of 2015 to the spring of 2020, because the rest of the time Statkevich was in jail. Both before and after.

We do not know what is happening with Palina, Viktar, Mikalai. And even those who are imprisoned along with them in the same colony or prison do not know either. If something comes with prison mail, they won’t answer. My husband told me how, in the same situation, in the cell-type premises on the appointed day, letters were handed out to the prisoners. They slammed the door with an exaggerated loudness, stomped their boots, shouted their names. And they passed his cell defiantly. Despite the fact that the whole world was writing to him. Andrei shouted loudly when walking at five in the morning, so that other prisoners could hear in other courtyards: “Men, help, expel information into the wild!” Guards were rapidly bringing him back to his cell, and representatives of the prison authorities were working with those who could hear. They did not let information out. The same is going on now. No information leaves punishment cells, ward-type rooms, hospitals and solitary confinements, dark corridors and dark dungeons.

So I want to say something like “But when they are released, they will be able to relax, spend as much time with their loved ones as they never did in the previous pre-war life, and finally enjoy their lives and all sorts of things that they were deprived of previously.” But they can't. They - Palina, Miikalai, Viktar and thousands of other prisoners - will not have time again. Because we will have to testify for the prosecution in so many trials that we, journalists, will blunt our quills, unable to withstand the load, and the gadgets’ memory will be exceeded. The hell with it, then, with the memory of gadgets. The main thing is that our memory will be fine and keep everything: every surname, every signature, every sentence. Every bastard that took years of our lives and even killed some of us.

Iryna Khalip, especially for Charter97.org

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