“Viasna” spoke with Valentin not only about the absurdity of the prison system and the biting cold of the punishment cell, but also about internal transformations: how the mind finds refuge within four walls, how one’s perception of classic literature shifts, and why unexpected solidarity from common criminals leaves a deeper impression than the cruelty of the guards.

Summary

Valiantsin Stefanovich, deputy chairman of Human Rights Center Viasna, was detained on July 14, 2021, along with Ales Bialiatski and Uladzimir Labkovich. On March 3, 2023, he was sentenced to 9 years imprisonment. He served first in Mogilev correctional colony No. 15, then for roughly the last year and a half in Mogilev closed prison No. 4. He was released and taken out of Belarus on March 19, 2026.

Timeline

14 July 2021 – detention

Stefanovich points out that in 2021, most of the office staff had left, but he—along with Bialiatski and Labkovich—stayed behind; “that was our decision.” They were detained by the Department of Financial Investigations: “the officers were polite—unlike GUBOPIK.” The “funniest part,” he adds, was his son’s toy pistol. Regarding the money and the filming, he puts it in these exact words:

They confiscated my personal money – about a thousand euros. I said: “This is the last money the family has, our family budget, I have three children.” They took both the money and the white-red-white flags. Moreover, all this was beautifully laid out on the table and filmed: flags, money, and a pistol. I said: “Excellent picture – they found a revolver with a human rights activist too!”

I asked: “Let me say goodbye to my family.” “Oh, come on, you will be home soon, we will just have a formal chat.”

Next sentence unchanged: “I said goodbye, hugged my wife and children – and that was it, for almost 5 years.”

Investigation: Articles 243 and 228(4)

Initially prosecutors used Article 243 Part 2 (DFR detained the group). There were attempts at non-procedural contacts; as a lawyer he demanded a defined procedural status: if not detained he would leave; if detained, produce the order and go to the Investigative Committee with counsel.

In autumn 2022 prosecutors showed cessation of prosecution under Article 243 together with reclassification to Article 228 Part 4 (smuggling within an organised group, with Viasna treated as a criminal group and a higher sentencing range than Article 243).

The investigator asked whether he had expected the change; he replied that under the current broad view of law at least it was not a capital offence, “and thank God.”

2023 trial; sentence on 3 March

On treatment in court:

We were treated with demonstrative humiliation. We rode in handcuffs, like everyone on preventative registration, although formally we were not yet on it. We were in handcuffs both in the cage and in the “glass” (isolated booth) between sessions. Handcuffs were removed only when hot food was brought to us, as the process was very long, and they did not take us back to the SIZO. Handcuffs were switched from behind our backs to the front. I tried to argue to them that this fundamentally contradicts the principle of presumption of innocence; it is cruel, degrading treatment.

He quotes his remark to the judge—”Perhaps it would be better if the court heard the convoy commander as well?”—and observes the proceedings: “This isn’t a court; it’s a total farce and a circus.” According to him, the prosecutor demanded a sentence of 12 years for Ales Bialiatski, 11 years for him, and 9 years for Uladzimir Labkovich; “they knocked two years off for each of us.” Regarding the verdict itself, he offers his own words:

Here a strange psychological effect occurred: I rejoice, I am happy – they gave me not 11 years, but “only” 9! Then you realize: “Why am I rejoicing?”

Mogilev IK-15, preventative dossier No. 10 and SHIZO

They immediately place him on “preventive watch No. 10—’prone to extremist and other destructive activity.’” The interview describes in detail a “provocation on the third day” after his arrival at the penal colony; the remarks are quoted verbatim:

When you enter the sleeping quarters, you must change into rubber slippers. I put them on. The orderly says: “They are calling you, come for a minute.” I approach the door – the quarantine chief is there. I say: “I am not in uniform, no boots.” – “Come in for a couple of minutes.” I enter. “Why are you not in uniform? Violation.” I received a penalty.

Continuing verbatim: “They are taking me to the SHIZO—the punishment cell—for the maximum term of 10 days (later increased to 15). It was May 3rd—my wife’s birthday.”

The heating season was over, but everyone wore quilted jackets; it was cold. They change my clothes, take away my underwear, I remain in my briefs, they give me a uniform with the inscription SHIZO, and put me in a large cell. I could not sleep at all; the cold was so intense! I shivered, did some squats, push-ups.

He clarifies: in 2023, he “spent 10 days in the SHIZO during almost every month—totaling about two months”; he “also rang in the New Year of 2024 in the SHIZO.” The heading of the corresponding section in the original text cites “20 days in the SHIZO”; however, the detailed account of the first episode specifies 10 days, subsequently extended to 15.

An example of the absurdity surrounding disciplinary sanctions is a verbatim exchange from an altercation over a soap dish: “You’re allowed to keep the soap, but not the soap dish”—a remark made by the unit chief, as described by the interviewee.

Then the unit chief (he was an honest man) would simply come and say: “Stefanovich, I need to punish you with SHIZO.” “Understood, citizen chief!” – “And what shall we write?” I said: “Inventory, as usual, or a jargon word – whatever you want.”

Strict regime: closed prison No. 4

After disciplinary escalation on the penal colony premises he was resentenced internally to three years prison and transferred to prison No. 4:

A cell in the basement, no daylight, a 40-minute walk per day, 1 basic unit for “atavarka.” They moved me between different cells; I went to SHIZO several times.

Release – hints, setbacks, March 18-19, 2026

I heard about releases. I knew that Tsikhanouski had been released. An officer from the Mogilev GUBAZiK came to me then. I thought: maybe he came to release me? That officer started to bait me: “We transferred Bialiatski to the hospital, Labkovich was released. You are the only one left, enter into a dialogue with us: tell us about Viasna, about Bialiatski, about the volunteers.” I understood everything. I was not tempted by such things; I started to mock him, saying: “And how much time do I have left? Only 4 years! That is fine!” He says: “I see you are still holding up. Bialiatski and Labkovich testified against you, but you do not want to testify against them!” I replied that I know: no one testified against anyone, because I am confident in my colleagues. In short, we parted with nothing.

At the end of January, a sergeant announced that they would be released the following day and would need to leave the country—”no alternative was mentioned”—followed by a week of fruitless waiting and the sense that they had been “deceived.”

In February he returned to SHIZO for ten days. On Wednesday 18 March, quoted without cuts:

On Wednesday, March 18, at 11 oclock, the chief was supposed to make a round of the entire prison. Suddenly, two OMON (riot police) officers in masks burst in, called out my surname and Kuliashous: “You have three minutes to pack!” Everyone asked: “Whats happening?” – “They are leaving!” We packed; I only grabbed my sports uniform and papers.

They frisked us, conducted a search. There was a premonition, anticipation, but nothing was clear. They put on handcuffs, a hat over my eyes. Two people led me by the arms, as I could not see where I was going. They put me in a bus. They said I was going for investigative measures. We arrived at the SIZO in Kaliadychy (and at first I did not understand what kind of large, completely new prison this was). A lot of authorities – colonel-lieutenant colonels-dogs.

I recognized Eduard Palchys, but not immediately: they put him, Kuliashou, and me in one cell.

Next morning they changed clothes, swapped boots for trainers and told detainees to shave. On leaving Belarus for the Lithuanian direction, forest stop (verbatim):

We drove into the forest near Kamenny Loh, stood for about an hour – as I understood, we were waiting for the American escort. Five cars with diplomatic plates passed, and we sped after them. Moreover, the Belarusian side did not inform us that we were pardoned. They did not ask – do you want to leave Belarus or not? They just brought us to the border.

Mr. Cole, according to the interviewee, said in English that “it’s all over; we are free”; negotiations were discussed, as was the fact that “250 people who had remained in Belarus were released today.”

Documents and political overview

All prison-related items – uniforms, quilted jackets, yellow tags – were taken away. All notes, copies of protocols, the verdict, the referral to prison were not returned; they tore out pages with relatives’ phone numbers from my notebook – I used that notebook to call my family. They did not return our passports; they only issued a certificate – a kind of identity confirmation. A photo with a stamp and it stated that this was Stefanovich. They said nothing: whether we could return, whether we could not – nothing! They simply expelled us from the country, that’s all – without passports!

It is as if I was in a coma for 5 years, and now I have woken up. And in a foreign country, too.

An assessment of the country’s political situation—after nearly five years behind bars—boils down, quite literally, to the following:

What’s happening now is simply a catastrophe – you cannot call it by any other name. Because all categories of civil and political rights and freedoms imaginable have simply been dismantled. Completely. If previously they were limited, but one could, relatively speaking, pay for cleaning the territory and hold some public action in a park, now nothing is allowed. That is, freedom of speech, thought, assembly, freedom of media – everything has been dismantled. There is not a single opposition political party, no human rights organizations. Democracy is carried out on the basis of the ideology of the Belarusian state. And who wrote it? By whom was it established, why is it mandatory for everyone? This is totalitarianism. This is a catastrophe.

Lead. Activists released from Belarus—and those forcibly expelled—have put Article 411 of the Criminal Code (“malicious disobedience” toward a penitentiary administration) in the public spotlight. By their account, the provision turns disciplinary incidents into grounds for new prison terms and creates a risk of de facto open-ended extension of detention. Mandate holders of the UN have in parallel raised the same article in official communications to the Belarusian authorities; the human rights center Viasna links the practice to breaches of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).

Vilnius, 22 December 2025: what former inmates said

According to Pozirk, former detainees who were released and expelled from the country held a press conference in Vilnius. Uladzimir Labkovich, coordinator of the “Human Rights Defenders for Free Elections” campaign, described each facility as having “its own specialities in how pressure is applied” and singled out Prison No. 8 in Zhodzina, where, he said, charges under Article 411 are widely used—a norm that “in effect allows sentences to be lengthened.”

Labkovich said he was interrogated under criminal articles other than those in his original verdict, and that in Zhodzina prison he was reportedly told outright that “they would arrange Article 411” for him by a certain date. As quoted in the piece: “That’s why even at the moment I was being released, until the very last moment I didn’t know I was getting out.”

Maksim Senik, a trade union member at “Hrodna Azot,” explained how add-on terms work (up to one or two extra years depending on the “gravity” of the original sentence) and stressed that convictions under this head can be repeated—“right to the grave,” in the tone of the report.

What UN mechanisms have already done

Regardless of the Vilnius event, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention and special rapporteurs addressed Article 411 in official communications to the Belarusian government.

The document states that Article 411 “in practice allows for indefinite deprivation of liberty” because the same person can be convicted repeatedly (including while still serving the original term or immediately after it). It names Siarhei Dziatsuk, Mikalai Dziadok, Dzmitry Kazlou, and Zmitser Dashkevich; it says that after the 2020 protests at least 66 people recognized by rights defenders as political prisoners received additional terms under this article. The experts express grave concern about the “broad and vague” wording and link abuse of disciplinary sanctions (disciplinary cells, PKT) to Belarus’s obligations under the ICCPR and the Convention against Torture.

Figures and Viasna’s legal position

According to Viasna / Radio Svaboda, since 2020 no fewer than 71 political prisoners have been sentenced to a new term under Article 411. The group’s lawyers tie this to violations of ICCPR Articles 7, 9 and 14. The overview lists typical grounds cited in verdicts: petty breaches of internal rules, refusal of certain kinds of work, and the like; it notes that the same conduct is first treated as a disciplinary breach and later as a criminal offence under Article 411.

Context in 2026

UN experts’ statements on the Belarusian prison system as a whole continued into 2026—for example in summaries such as Euronews—alongside wider discussion of disciplinary isolation and pressure on inmates.

On 30 April 2026, the Ministry of Information of the Republic of Belarus updated the national register of extremist materials and included the entire YouTube channel vDud run by journalist Yury Dud. The channel has more than 10 million subscribers. The underlying ruling was issued on 27 April 2026 by the Zheleznodorozhny (Railway) District Court of Vitebsk, as reported by independent outlets citing the ministry.

What the decision means

• The listing covers the whole channel, not individual videos: in practice the full back catalogue and future uploads on that YouTube resource fall under the restriction until the entry is removed from the register.
• Entries are added to the register on the basis of court decisions; the update was published in the Ministry of Information’s usual procedure (source: Ministry of Information of Belarus).

Context: the episode with Maria Kolesnikova

The court ruling and the register update come roughly two months after a long interview with Maria Kolesnikova appeared on vDud — a prominent figure in the 2020 protests in Belarus and one of the symbolic faces of the country’s opposition. The chronological link, as independent media sum it up, is that the authorities acted “two months after the interview was published on the channel.”

Link to the video: YouTube — interview.

The reasoning section of the court judgment was not laid out in the open press in the materials referenced here: publicly available information is essentially the fact that extremist status was attached to the channel as a whole and the wider political and media context around Kolesnikova.

Not the first time: individual videos were already listed

In March 2022, a court in Minsk declared three videos that had appeared on Dud’s channel and concerned Belarus to be extremist. Their titles were:

• Nexta: the flagship media outlet of the Belarus protests;
• Komissarenko: a new life after the Belarus protests;
• How do you live if your homeland is taken away?.

The new decision widens enforcement from singled-out episodes to the entire channel as one listed resource.

What it means for users inside Belarus

Listing is not about a “moral verdict on YouTube” but about administrative and criminal exposure when people interact with the content on the territory of Belarus:

• Dissemination: reposting, forwarding links, downloading or re-uploading, public screening, or other circulation of listed material is treated under current rules as dealing with “extremist” content.
• Subscription and possession: according to human-rights defenders and reported court stories, subscribing to a resource after it is entered in the register, as well as holding such materials, has already triggered administrative proceedings (fines or short arrests, depending on the case).
• Funding: donations or other support to channels once they appear in the register may in principle provide grounds for criminal charges (each episode is decided by investigators and judges); lawyers generally advise against sending money to such channels from Belarus when in doubt.

Liability always depends on the exact articles of the Criminal Code and the Code of Administrative Offences cited and on the evidence; the wording above summarizes typical cautions from watchdog groups regarding the national list.

Yury Dud and Russian law

Separately from the Belarusian register, Dud is listed as a “foreign agent” in Russia (Ministry of Justice registration from 2022 is noted in summaries). On 14 November 2025 a justice of the peace sentenced him in absentia to one year and ten months in a general-regime penal colony under Article 330.1 of the Criminal Code (failure to meet foreign-agent labelling obligations), as Zona Media and others reported. That Russian case does not supply the legal basis for the Belarusian vDud listing, but it is part of the same regional pressure on independent media.

Chernobyl Way is an annual procession of Belarusians on 26 April, marking the anniversary of the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 1986. It was held for the first time in 1989. In 2026, 40 years will have passed since the day of the accident — a special reason to remember those the event took or maimed for life, and the lie of the immediate aftermath, when for weeks people learnt the truth largely from others’ reports abroad.

What «Chernobyl Way» means

It is a pairing of time and the body politic of Belarusians: on the night of 25–26 April 1986, the fourth reactor unit at the Chernobyl NPP exploded. A radioactive cloud drifted with the wind across many Soviet republics, but the blow was especially heavy for the Byelorussian SSR — thousands of villages and towns fell into zones of elevated contamination because of the weather and how fallout was carried and deposited.

For weeks, the authorities remained almost silent; people pieced together the scale from official and unofficial sources outside the country. That line of concealment (“everything is under control”, when people had no control over their own daily lives) became one of the reasons people have been marching for decades: memory instead of evasion, honesty instead of Soviet and post-Soviet official lies.

The first marches and why 26 April

In 1989, a mass procession was held for the first time and later became a fixed tradition: the date is tied directly to the anniversary of the tragedy. Since then, for many years civic activists, participants in alternative movements and ordinary fellow countrymen have gathered on 26 April in the capital or in diaspora cities — to remember the victims, stand with those resettled from contaminated lands, and insist on naming the danger of radioactive zones as it really is.

What to keep in mind in 2026

• Forty years since the releases is a reminder that the effects of radiological contamination and the state walking away from dealing with those effects are not a story of “a single day” on the calendar, but a long arc.
• The “Way” is also a path against forgetting how symptoms were brushed aside, how information and decisions for people on the ground were delayed.

• For today’s exile and scattered Belarusian community, these traditions help maintain cohesion: commemorative rallies and marches in capitals and towns of the USA, Europe and elsewhere become a counterpart to something that inside the country fewer and fewer people can say aloud in the same way.

On this anniversary it is more honest to speak of a grim date — the dead and the sick, the villages wiped off the map, and the shortage of coherent, evidence-led environmental policy. The lie of 1986 (weeks of silence, late evacuations, downplaying scale for the bureaucracy instead of frank guidance to parents) sets a harsh standard for the present: whenever facts are spun again, the Belarusian custom of 26 April remains one of the public anchors where people say: we remember how it really was.

Mozyr human rights defender and Chernobyl disaster liquidator Vladimir Telepun was detained on 17 April 2026. He is believed to be held in the temporary detention facility (IVS) of the Mozyr district police department (ROVD). The exact reasons and legal basis for his detention are still being clarified.

Chronology of pressure

December 2021 — According to Zerkalo, searches were conducted at his dacha and apartment. Wider reporting at the time also covered raids against human rights defenders in that period.

6 September 2022 — Ten days’ arrest for a link on Facebook to the human rights site Paleskaya Viasna (Paleskaya Spring). An ambulance was called at the court hearing: the rights defender had missed taking his blood-pressure medication; security officers refused to pass on medication brought by relatives. Before the end of the term, three new administrative reports were drawn up; another search was carried out at his home; he was released on 1 October 2022.

16 November 2023 — Another detention; in Nasha Niva’s reporting, the motive is linked to preventing him from attending an appointment with a judge of the Constitutional Court at the Mozyr district executive committee. After three days he was released from the IVS without a trial.

January 2025 — According to Nasha Niva, 15 days’ arrest under part 2 of article 19.11 of the Administrative Offences Code (“dissemination of extremist information”); it was reported that he spent his 73rd birthday in the IVS.

Key facts of his work

Human rights work: He is part of the region’s human rights community and has repeatedly spoken out in defence of civil rights.

Defence of the “Rainbow” centre (2019): He actively supported families raising children with disabilities in the fight to keep the “Rainbow” (Raduga) rehabilitation centre in Mozyr open, as the authorities had sought to curtail its work.

Singer Rita Dakota (Margarita Gerasimovich), who was born in Belarus and built her career in Russia, spoke publicly for the first time about why her mother, Svetlana Gerasimovich, was detained in 2022. She did so on Instagram. Details have been recounted by, among others, Salidarnasc / GazetaBY and Nasha Niva.

Independent outlet Nasha Niva reported that news of the detention surfaced in a pro-government Telegram channel in the typical format used for such posts. The text referred to the threat of a criminal case over participation in protests.

What Dakota says now

According to the singer, her mother—a former primary-school teacher—was “the fairest and most empathetic” person.

“Being the fairest, most empathetic, and most compassionate person on this earth, my mother couldn’t walk past a crowd of security officers kicking a young man lying on the ground in the head with their kirza boots in Minsk in broad daylight. My mother shouted that this was wrong and tried to appeal to their humanity. Of course, no one listened to a pensioner; they brushed her off rudely.”

Rita says her mother came home deeply shaken by what she had seen—and wrote some emotional comment on social media. “For that she was charged with ‘public insult of a representative of authority in connection with the performance of official duties’ and ‘cyberbullying.’” Her mother could have been jailed, but “miraculously managed to leave” the country.

After Svetlana Gerasimovich’s detention, her daughter says, serious health problems began: she underwent major surgery and became a wheelchair user.

Why this is only coming out now

Rita Dakota deliberately stayed silent for several years: she feared publicity would worsen her mother’s situation. That is a typical pattern for families under political pressure—going public is seen as added risk.

Further context: after the 2020 protests in Belarus and the track “Ukhoди” (“Leave”), the singer herself ended up on a blacklist in her home country. After the full-scale war began, she spoke out in support of Ukraine. Nasha Niva has described restrictions on her touring in Russia and forced emigration (including living in the United States). The story with her mother fits into the wider pattern of pressure on relatives and associates.

Bottom line

Svetlana Gerasimovich’s case illustrates how in Belarus a response to street violence and an online post can lead to criminal exposure and a severe toll on health, while the family avoids discussing it publicly for years for safety reasons.

Belarus: political prisoners as of 7 April 2026 — the number, the trend, high-profile cases

The human rights centre Viasna and partners maintain the count of political prisoners in an open database; updates appear on spring96.org and on Telegram @viasna96.

How many people, and how the figure has moved

After the mass pardon on 19 March 2026, when about 250 people from those persecuted for political motives left detention, Viasna recorded 897 political prisoners — for the first time in more than four years below the 900 mark. Rights defenders warned at the same time: trials and detentions had not stopped; unless repression halts, the list will climb again.

On 26 March Viasna recognised 12 more people as political prisoners. According to Nasha Niva, that brought the public list to 910 in total (see spring96.org for detail).

7 April 2026: 17 more people

On 7 April 2026 Belarusian human rights groups issued a joint statement (Viasna, Belarusian Helsinki Committee, Lawtrend, Belarusian Association of Journalists, Legal Initiative). It recognised 17 more people as political prisoners (names as in Viasna’s and outlets’ lists — e.g. Palaznik, the Kavalenka family members, Pustakhod, Yankovich, and others; see REFORM.news / Nasha Niva for the full list).

According to the signatories, these people were detained or convicted in connection with contact with “extremist formations” and exercising freedom of expression.

As of 7 April 2026, 922 people were recognised as political prisoners in Belarus (figure from Viasna’s summary that day; recheck the current line on spring96.org when you publish).

Over roughly the past month — cases that made the news

• On 4 March Minsk City Court sentenced musician, researcher and radio host Aleh Khomenka to 3 years for cooperation with Radio Racyja (Nasha Niva).
• On 19 March Minsk City Court sentenced eight women to up to 10 years in a penal colony in the “courtyard chats” case (Radio Svoboda).
• Holy Week and Easter in detention were spent by parish priest Anatol Parakhnevich in Alkovichi, Vileyka district (Nasha Niva).
• Hleb Rybchenko, a 31-year-old IT specialist linked in reports to Wargaming / Lesta, faced heavy charges; open sources after review cite 14 years in a maximum-security colony (confirm against the final judgment).
• The arrest of civic activist and father of many children Viktar Yavumenka was reported by Nasha Niva (see also his inclusion in the 17 names of 7 April).
• Lithuanian citizen Miroslavas Trotskis was sentenced to 15 years in a maximum-security colony on espionage and related charges (DissidentBY and follow-up reports).

Bottom line

Against the large March release, the 897 figure briefly dipped below 900, but new recognitions and trials quickly pushed the count back up: 910, then 922 by 7 April. This is not steady “normalisation” but a revolving door: some leave detention, others are taken in. The month’s high-profile threads — Radio Racyja, courtyard chats, a priest at Easter, an IT case, and a foreign national on espionage charges — set the pace of public attention.

The YouTube video platform (owned by Google) removed the official channels of three major Belarusian state media outlets: the BelTA agency and TV channels STV and ONT. News of the block spread widely on the evening of 3 April 2026. Users see the platform’s standard notices that the account is restricted; Belarusian outlets themselves, as well as independent observers, note that the corporation has not issued a public explanation with a detailed rationale.

The Belarusian side’s position

According to BelTA, the move is linked to sanctions-related restrictions. At the same time, the agency stresses that BelTA itself is not under sanctions. The Information Ministry called the step unfriendly and unjustified and said it reserved the right to respond. Later the Foreign Ministry, the head of the CIS Executive Committee, and other official bodies commented. BelTA’s news feed also carried reactions from foreign media associations.

Scale

This is not only about stopping new uploads but about the disappearance of multi-year archives on the platform. According to figures cited in overview pieces (including references to STV metrics), the TV company’s channel had more than 2.4 million subscribers, and the combined reach of selected projects in 2025 was estimated at over 1.7 billion views.

Independent commentators tie the removals to Western sanctions on state media structures and related legal entities (public discussion includes the role of Belarusian State Television and Radio Company and similar entities under EU and US sanctions regimes). Without a separate corporate statement, the exact legal chain by which Google’s moderation removed these specific accounts remains a matter of interpretation.

The episode deepens polarisation in the media space: Belarusian state content loses a lawful presence on the world’s largest video service, the authorities promise a response, and viewers are urged to be careful with duplicate channels and to move to other platforms.

By the end of January 2026, human rights monitors estimated that 1,158 political prisoners were held in places of detention in Belarus. Among them were 172 women. Over the previous month, the monitoring community added 51 more people to that category. At the same time, Viasna recorded 50 people as former political prisoners — i.e. it recognised their prosecution as politically motivated in connection with exercising rights to peaceful assembly, association, and freedom of expression (including in the context of elections and public life after 2020).

What these three different numbers mean

The three figures answer different questions and must not be conflated.

1,158 is a snapshot on a date: how many people, as of 31 January 2026, rights defenders count as currently in pre-trial facilities, penal colonies, etc., on grounds they classify as political. For newsrooms, the source for such a cut-off is the updated data on spring96.org and tools such as the political prisoners table. Independent media sometimes carry the same figure in briefs (for example, Nasha Niva has cited 1,158).

51 in a month is inflow of “new” names on the list for January: new sentences, new figures in high-profile cases, or status changes when information appears. It is not the same as “exactly that many people were jailed in the country in a month”: some cases surface with a delay, some remain behind closed hearings.

50 former is a separate bookkeeping category: people whom rights defenders reclassified as former political prisoners by formally recording a finding of politically motivated prosecution. REFORM.news summarises the names and links to Viasna’s publication.

Important editorial note: in everyday speech, “rehabilitation” is often mixed up with legal rehabilitation under criminal law and removal of a conviction. Recognition as a former political prisoner is above all a human rights and moral-political designation, not an automatic court ruling on rehabilitation. If you write that activists “demanded rehabilitation”, specify what was meant — quashing a conviction, compensation, political acknowledgment — so readers do not assume the authorities had already issued a formal rehabilitation order.

Context after the December pardons

Readers may get the impression that after the mass releases at the end of 2025 “the problem is solved.” The 1,158 snapshot shows the opposite: the machinery of political cases keeps refilling the lists. In parallel, large-scale operations and trials continue in the public domain (in January 2026, media agendas still featured the case tied to the Belaruski Hajun monitoring project and mass detentions). That is not “proof” behind each of the 51 new entries, but it helps explain why the count at the prison gate does not fall in a straight line.

What the desk should do before publication

• Cross-check 1,158, 172, 51, and the wording on the 50 against the current news line on spring96.org — figures can shift slightly within days of the cut-off.
• In the lead or a footnote, briefly explain: “political prisoner” is a human rights methodology term, not the charge wording in a verdict.
• For art, label “collage / AI / symbolic” if it is not documentary photography.

Editorial disclaimer. If any figure in your draft differs from the latest line on spring96.org on the day you publish — the rights defenders’ primary source takes prio