Catching Up And Overtaking Gulag

It’s not a dictatorship anymore. It’s fascism.

This is no longer a dictatorship, this is fascism.

Yesterday, a lawyer was not allowed to see Alena Lazarchyk again. The "excuse" of the jailers was as always - either they allegedly had not received her application for a meeting with a lawyer, or she was so fond of her work that refused to leave her native workshop so as not to reduce production volumes accidentally. Since they’ve put Alena in the Homeil colony - she was transferred there in January - the lawyer has not been able to meet with the client even once. More than half a year has passed. We know that Alena was in a punishment cell. But we do not know for how long she was there and where she is now: in the same place, in a cell type room or in a squad.

Charter’97 published my article here, in its news stories, literally two weeks ago. I recalled then that there had been no news from Mikalai Statkevich for five months, and from Viktar Babaryka for three months. I wrote about the suffering of their relatives, because of that. They still do not know whether their loved ones are alive or not. This article is about Maryna Adamovich who can not sleep peacefully at night and about how difficult it is for Andrei Sharenda to find his wife Palina, who is being transported for the seventh time. Jailers are “losing” her during transportation from time to time. I also wrote about the fact that relatives and friends of political prisoners make endless requests and complaints to the Department of Corrections but receive standard replies - supposedly, everything is in order and demands not to distract decent people from important state duties.

It is necessary to write about this, sending to hell journalistic prejudices like "there was the same news recently". Because the topic will be relevant until the last political prisoner is in prison or until letters, calls and meetings with a lawyer become regular at least. The imagination of any sane person started drawing even more frightening pictures in this dead silence, after the death of Ales Pushkin. You are thinking about what is happening behind the tightly boarded-up doors of prisons and what the tightly boarded-up mouths of guards are silent about and it's becoming even more terrible. No other way.

But let's try for a moment to mentally penetrate those stone walls, to the political prisoners who have been in isolation for months. So, we will understand that they are much more afraid. Their relatives, friends and just concerned people can do something at least. Yes, Maryna Adamovich knows for a long time in advance what the Department of Corrections will answer exactly in its official replies to her complaint as well as replies regarding visits of a lawyer in prison. But while she is writing these complaints, while she is asking a lawyer to visit Mikalai in prison, while she is writing letters to her husband that will be thrown away by the prison administration, she is still acting. She is fighting. She does not give up, hits the prison walls with her best. It’s strange but does not exhaust but gives strength. Mikalai and hundreds of other fully isolated political prisoners go crazy with ignorance of what is happening to their loved ones.

Just imagine: a political prisoner's mother is ill and needs surgery. A prisoner is “covered” with a cap of complete isolation at that moment. The prisoner does not know if there was surgery, if the mother is alive or if anyone is helping her. There is no chance of finding it out. Or, for example, Ihar Losik finds out that his wife Dasha was arrested, and after that - nothing. Or a child graduates from school, but whether he graduated from it and what will happen next - no news. Palina Sharenda-Panasiuk does not know at which school her youngest son will go to the first grade on September 1. It's likely that Viktar Babaryko does not know that his son was sentenced to eight years in prison. Alena Lazarchyk does not know the fourth-grade year results of her son Artsiom. Mikalai Statkevich, who knows the tough temper of his wife, who only talks to officials in the way they deserve, has been unable to make sure for five months that Maryna is still at large, and not arrested, like Darya Losik. But they have more than enough disinformation, fakes and provocations by the KGB there. And it is impossible to imagine the conditions of our political prisoners there, being kept in complete isolation for months.

I begin to doubt that Belarus is the last dictatorship in Europe after the death of Ales Pushkin, who was brought to the hospital from the Hrodna prison already in an unconscious state, after the post of Dzianis Ivashyn’s mother, who recalled that from this very prison, he was transported with covid symptoms and fever, 39 degrees Celsius, after the news of the death of a prisoner at Akrestsina, who didn’t get his asthma medicine timely. We've been speaking this phrase for so many years that it has begun to sound almost comfortable - natively, close, familiar. No, Belarus is no longer just a dictatorship. This is a fascist state with concentration camps. And for the rehabilitation of Nazism, it was necessary to judge not Ales Pushkin, who was killed the other day, but a completely different person. We all know him.

Iryna Khalip, especially for Charter97.org

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