Evil Is Done In Silence

• Iryna Khalip
• 28.04.2023, 13:29

Talking about political prisoners is our common duty.

We still do not know what exactly happened to Viktar Babaryka. They didn't bother to tell us. And now everyone who is worried about him is forced to look for at least some messages in Telegram channels, the authors of which do not have complete information in the same way, and guess: beating? torture? inhuman treatment? disease? The demonstrative silence of the kolkhoz authorities intensifies the hatred towards them and the fear for Babaryka. What the hell is going on with him?

We do not know. And we see how our society was gradually moved away from any information about political prisoners. For two months no letters have come from Viktar Babaryka. Even earlier, they stopped letting lawyers in to see him — however, he doesn’t even have lawyers now: Layeuski and both Pylchankas — father and son — were deprived of their licenses, and then Chyzhyk. There were no visits or calls either. That is, Babaryka was left without lawyers, letters, contacts with relatives, and what happened to him in the Navapolatsk colony before ending up in the district hospital is unknown. One former political prisoner, having been released, says that Babaryka is in a punishment cell. The other says that he is in the cell-type premises. Both of these are true at the time of the release of each of the former political prisoners. But in a colony, everything can change very quickly, and the lack of information regularly coming to the outside — from letters, from conversations with a lawyer — unties the hands of not only guards, but also prisoners collaborating with the administration.

This is the old tactic of complete isolation, which the regime began to introduce ten years ago, and now, in recent years, has perfected it. That is why there has been no news from Mikalai Statkevich for almost three months now, and that is why a lawyer has not been allowed to see Elena Lazarchik since the end of January, since her arrival in the Gomel colony. A person is deprived of calls, letters, meetings, meetings with a lawyer, and inside the zone, other prisoners, under the fear of ShIZO, are forbidden even to greet a political one. The political prisoner must feel acute, unbearable, total loneliness, lose any support, any crutch to lean on, even if it is a whispered "good morning". And let him go crazy along with his loved ones, who are still on this side of the bars.

And most importantly, in this information vacuum, you can do whatever you want. Babaryka is lucky to have had a well-known surname: one of the doctors of the Navapolatsk hospital saw this, told his friends — and scant information without details of what had happened leaked through the bars and “prohibitions”. And how many political prisoners are now somewhere in a medical unit or in a district hospital after the same beatings, torture and abuse? We do not know. According to Viasna, 87 political prisoners are serving their sentences in the Navapolatsk colony. And now let's conduct a small experiment: how many names of political prisoners from the penal colony #1 can you list right off the bat? I am sure that you will name two: Babaryka and Losik. Journalists can name four — add Andrei Aliaksandrau, a media manager, and Andrei Kuznecyik, a freelancer from Svaboda. And that's it.

Do the names Kombul, Malyuha, Paulenka, Tsimashchuk ring the bell for you? No. Same with me. And these are political prisoners from the same colony. But if they are taken to the Navapolatsk hospital, none of the staff will pay attention to this and will not tell anyone — you never know how many people are being brought. So, it’s not just the precise quantity of political prisoners that we do not know. Even among those who are recognized as such, we do not know the exact number of those who are now being tortured and subjected to inhuman treatment.

By the way, about the quantity. Recently, an interview with businessman Dzmitry Bohush appeared on state television. “Interview-repentance,” as the propagandists themselves dubbed it. But it's not about the content of the interview. Not in the way they portrayed that they went towards the lost sheep and allowed to speak on the “main TV channel of the country.” And not in the way the camera greedily, lustfully caught a close-up of the moment when tears come out of a person’s eyes. It just turned out that Dzmitry Bohush has been in jail for several months for comments on social media. But he is not on any list of human rights activists. And it's not the fault of human rights activists. This is the fear of relatives who think that in complete silence a person is more likely to get off with a suspended sentence. But they are wrong. They no longer give suspended sentences, since that very August. And for active repentance and dealing with the investigation, sometimes they give even more than without them, as happened, for example, with Yury Ziankovich. It is in silence that absolute evil is done.

I won't say that glasnost equals security: there are no safe places left in Belarus, and even more so in prisons. But the louder and more often the names of political prisoners sound, the more likely it is that in a situation similar to the one in which Viktar Babaryka found himself, one of the doctors, nurses, paramedics, registrars will recognize the last name in the same way and at least tell his friends. And among them there will certainly be someone who will inform journalists or human rights activists. And then it will no longer be possible to commit evil that no one will ever know about. Get well soon, Viktar Dzmitryevich.

Iryna Khalip, Exclusively for Charter97.org