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Belarus: women political prisoners endure harsh conditions [1]
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Date: 2023-04
Olga Voitekhovich’s cell in a Minsk pre-trial detention centre is ten square metres – and she shares it with 15 other prisoners. She knows its dimensions because she measured it with some thread and a couple of matchboxes. She’s awaiting trial, accused of setting fire to a Belarusian MP’s house in 2021.
“The walls are dilapidated and they constantly crumble, and there’s a fungus on the walls,” explained her friend, another political prisoner, Olga Ritus.
Voitekhovich is set to become one of more than 500 Belarusian women to have been convicted in politically motivated prosecutions since the country’s stolen 2020 elections, in which president Alexander Lukashenka held onto power in a vote marred by fraud and the violent suppression of protests. During those protests, women held a series of peaceful marches and supported protesters.
This week, Voitekhovich stands trial together with her husband and children, who are also accused of tumped-up terrorism charges – a new way of stifling dissent in Belarus.
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Ritus, her friend, had acted as an independent observer at the 2020 elections, and later attended the protest marches that shook the regime as it scrambled to retain control.
Two years later, Belarusian police detained Ritus on her way to work – and beat her mercilessly.
“As I got out of my car, one of the police officers hit me on the head and told me to face the ground,” she recalled.
“Then in the station they hit me once more, and I fell over. And then they started kicking me.” She remembered how an officer dragged her down the corridor by her hair.
Ritus was transferred to a pre-trial detention centre, and then sentenced to three years of ‘home chemistry’ – a form of house arrest with strict restrictions on movement, including even going to the shops or taking out the rubbish. The name derives from a Soviet system in which some convicted people lived in dormitories rather than prison and worked in chemical factories.
Belarusian propaganda often claims that leader Alexander Lukashenka does not ‘fight women’. But as four political prisoners told openDemocracy, the Lukashenka regime has made their lives miserable – in revenge for taking a stand against the authorities.
You can cry here
Olga Ritus is now safe with her children in a European country – she was able to leave Belarus before her sentence came into force. But she still remembers the women she met in pre-trial detention.
“I held on during the interrogations; I didn’t cry. But when I was taken to a prison cell and I saw the eyes of women just like me, I felt warm. I exhaled. They told me: ‘You can cry here.’ And I burst into tears from the realisation that these are people who can support me.”
The crumbling mattresses, lack of sunlight and bunk beds stacked close together made for a depressing atmosphere.
“I noticed that all the girls had very pale skin, almost transparent,” Ritus said. “Then my skin became like that too, because you just sit there, without light, in a closed space, in constant anxiety.
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[1] Url:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/belarus-lukashenka-regime-political-prisoners-international-womens-day/
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