WARSAW-KYIV — Ryszard Kapuscinski, a famous Polish globetrotting journalist, once wrote that “those who write history focus too much on loud events, and too little on silence.” Silence, in his words, was “a signal of misfortune, and often crime… it is necessary for tyrants and colonizers, who make sure their deeds are shrouded in it.”
The world’s despots are indeed fond of silence, and the one in Belarus is no exception. As the international community’s attention turned to the Middle East, and later Japan, Lukashenka began to mete out harsh punishments to those who dared defy him with ever greater fervor.
Yet one man recently dared break this curse of silence. After being released from a KGB prison, Ales Michalevich, a presidential candidate in the 2010 elections, told a press conference on February 28 about the brutality he had experienced during his two-month arrest in the infamous KGB prison known as “Amerikanka.” In his statement he exposed the tortures methods used by the Belarusian KGB, which included twisting his arms behind his back until his joints started cracking, forcing him and other prisoners to stand naked while tripping their legs into a near full split, sleep deprivation, leaving prisoners in non-ventilated rooms that were repeatedly painted with acetone-based paint, constant exposure to the cold, and other forms of degrading treatment.
In Warsaw I met with Ales ZAREMBIUK, a social activist, opposition member, journalist, and Michalevich’s campaign manager during the recent elections. Zarembiuk has a long experience in the opposition, having become a member of Malady Front, a youth opposition organization, already in 1998. He later turned to local government, becoming the country’s youngest municipal commissioner in 2003, voted in with 74.6 percent. However, politics then became more costly, leading to his expulsion from university, “precautionary arrests,” and finally driving him to leave the country. (He is currently a recipient of the prestigious K. Kalinowski scholarship at Warsaw University.)
“MICHALEVICH BROKE THE BARRIER”
While there had long been rumors about the abusive treatment of prisoners in Belarus, the methods exposed by Michalevich came as a shock. “What Michalevich did, nobody had done before him,” Zarembiuk explained, “Belarusian society used to hear some stories about such things being done by the KGB and Interior Ministry employees to ordinary criminals, but never to political prisoners. However, after Michalevich’s statements a former political prisoner, Alexei Shidlovsky [who in 1998, as a 19-year-old, received an 18-month sentence in a prison colony on charges of “malicious hooliganism” and “abuse of state symbols” for an anti-government graffiti and the use of the non-Soviet Belarusian national flag; he is currently living in the Czech Republic. — Ed.] wrote about having been subject to beatings, though not torture, in a blog post.
Michalevich’s revelations also inspired others to share their tales, including Aleksandr Atroshchenko (currently sentenced to four years in a penal colony) and Natalia Radzina, a journalist working for Charter 97, a pro-democracy website (she was subsequently arrested). “Michalevich broke the barrier.” Zarembiuk says, “Now the whole world knows about the tortures.”
Following the public statements Michalevich was brought in for interrogation, where KGB officers told him that the footage of his imprisonment would suffice for a full-length documentary, implying that it could be used to discredit him. However, he remained unmoved, and was supposedly allowed to depart afterwards. Zarembiuk credits the media attention that Michalevich managed to attract for the lack of reprisals: “He recommended that I not return: ‘they let me out, but they would not have let you out.’”
EUROPE’S LAST DICTATORSHIP
Though Lukashenka has never been one for civil rights, his reaction to the 2010 presidential election protests was nonetheless unprecedented. Zarembiuk attributes this to the liberalization of the election campaign, which allowed candidates to communicate with the people. “Social media also played a very important role,” Zarembiuk adds, “Facebook, twitter… he tried to block these sites, but without much result. He now understands he no longer has the kind of support he had in 2006.”
Yet for all the good intentions of Belarusian activists, and the support of foreign governments, it is hard to conceive any new, more effective strategy for the country. While interpersonal contacts, foreign grants, programs for students and professionals that are organized by the US and various European nations are all desirable, the effects remain limited. The same goes for sanctions, like the recent travel ban on the country’s top 150 leaders, which result in their discomfort, but not much else. Zarembiuk believes that tougher sanctions could produce better results, but would hurt the Belarusian people. “Opposition politicians and civic society would have to constantly explain that these sanctions are the result of Lukashenka’s actions,” he says.
Sadly, Ukraine remains one of the bigger disappointments in terms of foreign support for the Belarusian opposition. For a country that managed to overcome its backslide into post-Soviet tyranny in the Orange Revolution, Ukraine is now conspicuously absent from the Belarusian scene. While the country may not have the technical capacity of various Western states, it undeniably has practical experience to share. This makes the recent decision to refrain from condemning Lukashenka’s regime together with six other Central European states, under the feeble pretext of “lack of time,” all the more deplorable.
“Ukraine and Belarus are now engaged in considerable economic cooperation,” explained Zarembiuk, “Generally speaking, there are no significant expectations within the Belarusian opposition. Still, the fact that President Viktor Yanukovych, immediately after the December 19 elections, said that Lukashenka should not have reacted in such a manner, was received positively. But the fact that Azarov did not sign the condemnation, unfortunately, means that Ukraine is not ready for any kind of sacrifice. There will be no support of the kind we receive from Poland, Germany or the United States.”
EXILE
On March 14 Michalevich wrote on his blog that he is beyond the reach of the Belarusian KGB, leading to a fair share of speculation. Zarembiuk subsequently informed me that he is currently in a center for asylum seekers in Brno, Czech Republic. However, at the time of writing he had not made any public appearances, at the Czech authorities’ request. While he remains concerned about Michalevich’s wife and daughters, Zarembiuk hopes that neither they nor any other prisoners will suffer from retaliatory measures: “The fate of political prisoners in Belarus is entirely dependent on Lukashenka’s will. And he is unpredictable.”






