Shocking Report On Female Political Prisoners In Belarus

Even solidarity is forbidden in Lukashenka's Gulag.

Female political prisoners in Belarus face a dire and catastrophic situation. Editor-in-Chief of Charter97.org Natallia Radzina told about this at the Fifth Reading in Honor of Arseny Roginsky's Memory. The event was organized by the international Memorial Human Rights Society on March 29 in Berlin.

The conference was named in honor of Arseny Roginsky (1946-2017), a historian, political prisoner and one of the founders of the Memorial.

Natallia Radzina made a report on how women political prisoners are tortured in Belarusian prisons. The Charter97.org website offers the full text of the speech:

— It is difficult to say how many women are currently among political prisoners. About two hundred names were known, some of the women were released at the moment. But how many more were arrested at the same time?

But there are some figures. According to the Viasna Human Rights Center, more than 8,000 women have been subjected to political persecution since August 2020. They were not only arrested and sent to prisons and colonies, but also sentenced:

— to forced labor (so-called "chemistry") in open-type correctional facilities – in fact, a kind of concentration camps;

— compulsory treatment in psychiatric hospitals;

— the so-called "home chemistry", when political prisoners have the right to leave the apartment only to go to work and are under the constant supervision of the police, which is for checks even at night.

— huge fines.

A woman is always more vulnerable in prison. Both for natural physiological reasons and psychologically. Knowing this, they are tortured in prisons in a particularly sophisticated manner. The goal is to humiliate, trample dignity, break the will.

In the Minsk detention center on Akrestsina Street in 2020, the conditions for women were even worse: the detainees were kept in stuffy and overcrowded cells without a toilet, soap, sanitary pads, toilet paper, food and even water. Here is the testimony of one of the former political prisoners: "There were 36 women with me in a four-seater cell without a toilet and water. The guards forced us to strip naked just to have fun.”

A report prepared by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) confirms the rape of detainees and the use of other forms of sexual and gender-based violence against men and women.

In Belarus, there are two prisons for women — prison No.4 in Homel and prison No.24 for so-called female recidivists in Rechytsa.

All women convicted for political reasons are marked with yellow "extremist" tags. The analogy suggests itself with the yellow stars worn by Jews during the Holocaust.

Such a status imposes significant restrictions. Women are subjected to constant bullying and humiliation. For fabricated reasons (such as unbuttoned buttons, improperly tied headscarves, etc.), women are subjected to disciplinary actions: extra duty, denial of the next package, deprivation of phone calls with relatives, denial of long-term visits, placement in a punishment isolation cell, and after several such minor "violations" within a year — tightening of detention conditions (transfer to a cell-type facility, followed by transfer to a prison regime or a new prison sentence).

In the Homel prison, women work in a garment factory, sew uniforms for security forces and the military. In particular, it is known that they sewed uniforms for soldiers of the Russian army. Despite the fact that the company has a 6-day working week, women are often forced to work on Sunday as well.

“It is very dusty, there is nothing to breathe. The fabric comes with terrible impregnations. Allergies and asthmatics suffer a lot there," describes the working conditions of the former political prisoner. At the same time, prisoners work almost free of charge. One of the women said that in the first month in the colony she received 44 kopecks (10 cents), later — 2-3 rubles (less than 1 euro).

Women are also required to clean the premises and territory of the colony, unload vegetables, furniture.

According to the report of the International Committee for the Investigation of Torture in Belarus, one of the monstrous punishments in the Homel women's colony is a cell located on the territory of the colony between the residential and industrial zones. Women are placed in this cage for refusing to comply with employee demands. Women spend from half an hour to 8 hours there.

More terrible than this is the punishment cell, where women are often placed as punishment.

What is this? The punishment cell is very small and cold. There is only a wooden "bed," which is detached from the wall from 9:00 PM to 5:00 AM. The rest of the time, prisoners are allowed to either walk around the cell or sit in a stone cold seat. Bedding and underwear are not provided. Walks are prohibited for women in the punishment cell (SHIZO). No calls, no parcels, no letters. Total isolation. The light is constantly on. Sitting on the floor is also prohibited – for this, a new penalty may be imposed.

There is a constant draft in the punishment cell, and it is very cold. The women’s clothes are taken away and replaced with special prison robes. Moreover, stockings and leggings are taken away, so even in winter, the prisoners are left with bare legs. Some find a way out — to wrap their feet with toilet paper. Also, for several years now, political prisoners have not been given quilted jackets for the night by order of the prison administration, so there is nothing to hide there. Such conditions are considered as torture by cold.

Only toilet paper, soap, a small towel, toothpaste and a brush are allowed in the punishment cell. Sometimes toothpaste is prohibited and teeth have to be cleaned with soap. Despite the fact that the cell is damp and cold, the administration can keep women there for a month or even longer.

Women begin to have problems with veins, swollen legs, the genitourinary system suffers and other health problems worsen from inactivity and poor conditions.

In both the punishment cell and the punishment isolation unit, the food is different from what is typically provided in the regular units — it is even more meager. They are mostly fed porridge. But, for example, they don't even put butter. Such restrictions also affect health, since women do not receive any vitamins or fresh air, and now they are also underdosed on the necessary products.

The prison administration prohibits communication between political prisoners, and for discussing political events in the country they can be punished with days in jail. Prisoners are in an information vacuum behind bars. The only source is propaganda news. Also, prisoners are forced to watch several times a day not only programs on state television, but also special propaganda videos on political topics — this is called the Vektor regime event.

In addition, many women convicted for "political reasons" are prohibited from visiting prison clubs, churches, and gyms, and since the beginning of the full-scale war in Ukraine, their correspondence has been blocked with everyone except close relatives.

Female prisoners are not allowed to keep most medications with them, and for chronic illnesses, they receive medications from the paramedic only after a long wait in line. To see a doctor and receive more serious assistance, one must submit a special request and wait for their turn. The list of available medications is extremely limited, so many women are constantly sick, and their chronic illnesses worsen. Because of the difficulty in obtaining a sick leave, women who are sick are forced to go to work, stay on duty and remove snow on the street.

Human rights activists were also shocked by the sanitary conditions in the prisons, the inaccessibility of hygiene products. Prisoners can go to the shower once a week for 15 minutes, for washing on the wrong day they are punished. Women are mostly responsible for their own hygiene products. Once a month, they are given one pack of pads and one roll of toilet paper, it happens that neither of them is in the store. Sanitary pads can be delivered during a clothing transfer, but it is only allowed once every six months.

"Any act of solidarity — for example, one woman giving another a pad, tea, or something else — is considered a violation, and sanctions may follow," the report from the International Committee for the Investigation of Torture in Belarus states.

It is also known that the prison administration does not provide HIV-infected units with the necessary hygiene products to maintain proper hygiene. For example, the units do not have antiseptic for disinfecting the shared sewing needles that all prisoners use daily. At the sewing factory where women work, nothing is sanitized either.

In prison No.24 for female recidivists in Rechytsa, the conditions are even harsher. Recently released political prisoner Palina Sharenda-Panasiuk referred to it as a "slaughterhouse". There, women are almost constantly kept in punishment cells and cell-type premises. Now in this colony, political prisoners Volha Mayorava, Alena Hnauk and Viktoryia Kulsha are literally being killed there. The situation is disastrous. Women have serious health problems and there are fears that they will not get out of there alive. For example, Viktoryia Kulsha several times held hunger strikes for a month, refused water, and also opened her veins.

Today it is extremely important to keep the situation with political prisoners in Belarus, both women and men, in focus. Their lives largely depend on whether we remember them, whether we fight for their release.

I am very grateful to Memorial for the opportunity to speak at this conference in Berlin. Everything that this organization has been doing for so many years, collecting evidence of the crimes of the Soviet regime, is extremely important. I can say from personal experience: the memory of repressions in the past helps to experience them in the modern world. I read the memoirs of Larysa Hieniush, Yevgenia Ginzburg, Olga Adamova-Sliozberg, Tamara Petkevich and Eufrosinia Kersnovskaya, whose names were often heard at the conference. The realization of the hell people went through in the Stalinist GULAG gives strength to continue and never give up under any circumstances.

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