Ludmila Karpenko: My Departure is Temporary Phenomenon :: Charter'97 :: News

The family of the prominent Belarusian politician Gennady Karpenko (Vice-Speaker of Supreme Soviet, who died on April 6, 1999 under mysterious circumstances) left for Germany a year ago. Half a year later Ludmila Karpenko, his son Dmitry and daughter Tatiana were given political asylum in the town of Trir. Today the Karpenko family lives in Eslingen.

- Do you feel comfortable in Germany? Did it replace your homeland? – I asked Ludmila Karpenko.

- Germany is a special country and it is so different from Belarus. Young people can get accustomed here more easily, but not me. It is as if my body was here, while my soul remained in Belarus.

- Don’t you feel pity that you left homeland?

- That’s a tough question to answer. It is always hard to kiss homeland good-bye. Even now I am there with you in my thoughts. My house and my husband’s tomb are there too. Gennady’s mom and my elder grand-daughter are living in Belarus.

Before presidential elections in 2001 they threatened me and said that they would get rid of me just as of my husband before. I knew that not only my phone, but my whole apartment had been tapped. And so we decided to leave the country.

Since the first minute of my coming to Germany I knew for sure that my departure would be but temporary. I will return back home as soon as it becomes possible. I love my motherland and my nation, for the exception of one man, who ruined my life.

- Did the political refugee’s status ease your life financially?

- They have equal privileges here for all fugitives. We receive a monthly allowance, social aid for apartment and a right for free language courses. It’s great that we have something to live on and to buy food.

My son is studying in the university of Tubingen. In Germany they don’t recognize Belarusian diplomas, for the exclusion of those on physics. Dima graduated from the department of physics of the Belarusian State University and managed to confirm his knowledge here.

My daughter is attending intensive training courses in German and intends to get a diploma of an economist. But she will have to pass extra studies for that. However, Tatiana will have to pay nothing for the studies, as far as there exist special foundations in Germany, which render assistance to all those, who are willing to continue scholarly studies.

- Are you still coordinating the activities of the Gennady Karpenko’s foundation?

- I always used to say that my departure in no wise means that I capitulated or simply gave it up.

However, I was greatly frustrated by one fact. As you know, PACE set up a special commission on disappearances in Belarus, chaired by the Russian prominent human rights defender Sergei Kovalev. Back in the past myself and other spouses of the missing opposition members did our best to make such a commission appear. Over the past year since I first came to Germany I had numerous international contacts at which we raised this issue. Nonetheless, the commission still refuses to consider Gennady Karpenko’s case among the rest and so I got to fight on my own. But I do everything, which is in my power.

- Do your friends support you?

- Of course, they do. In Germany I keep up contact with the former OSCE ambassador in Belarus Mr.Hans-Georg Wieck and Olga Zakharenko. In July we met with her at the Berlin OSCE Assembly. I guess we will meet again in spring this year.

Germans understand friendship differently from us. You can’t go and borrow a loaf of bread or some salt here. Nevertheless, we have friends among Germans too: they invite us to them and come to visit us too in order to morally encourage us.

Our Belarusian friends sometimes call and visit us. And I am so grateful to them for that.