After dictator Lukashenka’s talks with US presidential envoy John Coale, 25 political prisoners left the colonies on 16 September. All of them were taken to Lithuania. The same day, in one colony, more than ten others were prepared for release. They were given papers, gathered with their belongings in the assembly hall and told to wait for transport. After lunch they were told there would be no release, and they were sent back to their units.
Viasna reported this on 7 October. The colony is not named. They were men: some had already given part of their things to other prisoners. Their psychological state worsened, and several needed medical help. A source told the human rights defenders that parcels for some of them were refused that day: the colony no longer listed them as prisoners. Viasna knows of similar cases in other colonies. Altogether, it says, several dozen more people were being prepared for release that day. They stayed behind bars. Relatives were not told why.
More than twenty-five were expected
The day before, families were told they could come on the morning of 16 September and meet their people. Viasna human rights defender Uladzimir Labkovich said at least 200 were supposed to get out: about 25 were to be taken out of the country, and the rest could stay in Belarus. Zerkalo reported his words. The only ones who left were the 25 taken to Lithuania. Two hundred is an expectation, not a list of people who had already been handed papers. Viasna confirms the papers and the assembly hall for more than ten in one colony.
Valiantsin Stefanovich, who was freed on 19 March and taken to Lithuania, links the September reversal to the outcome of the talks: more people were prepared, twenty-five were taken out. In January, still in Mogilev prison No. 4, a guard told him he would be released the next day but would have to leave the country. He gave his things away. He was free only on 19 March. That is a different case, not 16 September. Stefanovich uses it to say that the swing — from certainty that tomorrow it all ends, to the blow — is more than every mind can take. It hits the families too. Political prisoners should not expect psychological help in a colony, he says: the administration’s job is not to help but to make things worse. He calls it psychological abuse.
Hope was given and taken back at once
Psychotherapist Vasily Zavadski says this is not ordinary prison stress. The person was given not hope but certainty — and then a refusal. It is heavier if the things have already been given away and relatives have come for someone. A blow like that, he says, can damage health and lead to thoughts of suicide. That is his assessment of the risk, not a report that this happened to any of these ten. He expects support from other prisoners. He does not expect a psychologist to work with them.
Viasna lawyer Pavel Sapelka notes that a pardon formally goes through a petition, a commission at the presidential administration and a personal decree. The law provides no way to recall a decree that has already been signed. If people were gathered for release and the decision was then lifted on the spot, that is not a procedure. It is one person’s arbitrariness. Viasna does not write that a decree was signed for these particular people. Sapelka is describing what such a step is, if the decision had already been taken. He also places what happened under article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights: a ban not only on torture but on cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. To take away the hope that the suffering will end is, for him, an act of cruel treatment. A pardon, Sapelka writes, has stopped being an act of mercy. People in grave ill health are left in the colonies. Release has become a bargain: hostages taken and exchanged in pieces.