It will be no revelation when I say Belarus prisons are bleak. The conditions are dirty, the routines mind-numbing and the guards brutal. But perhaps this detail will surprise you: in the middle of some prisons are books. Beautiful, transportive books. Even politically risqué books. “This atmosphere was complemented by an unexpectedly rich library, where prisoners could even find Orwell or Machiavelli,” one former detainee told the human rights organisation Viasna this week. “Books became a lifeline. From the prison library and bookshop, I managed to access literature that helped me endure,” said Larysa Shchyrakova in an article she wrote for us last month. For her, one book in particular, Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, which details the Viennese neurologist’s experience in a Nazi concentration camp, became essential reading.
A library in jail cuts both ways though. In some penal colonies the way to punish political prisoners is not to allow them access, so they have to risk further punishment by borrowing books from fellow inmates.
Today, 21 May, is the International Day of Solidarity with Political Prisoners in Belarus. We’re thinking of all the 1,000-plus prisoners wrongfully detained and we’re especially thinking of our colleague Andrei Aliaksandraŭ. We don’t know exactly what his daily life is like – we haven’t been able to directly contact him in years – but we do hope that erudite and curious Andrei will not be one of the unlucky ones forbidden the solace of reading.
By January this year, Andrei had spent five of his birthdays in prison. A journalist by training, who once worked for Index in our London office and later became a regular contributor from Belarus, Andrei was sentenced to 14 years on a charge of high treason several years ago. To mark the grim anniversary and to keep his case in the spotlight, we wrote this about him.
We feel we have failed Andrei. Others have been released ahead of their full sentence. Andrei has not. That’s not through lack of trying. While our dreams to have his name flash up in his favourite Liverpool FC stadium have yet to materialise, we’ve managed to get Margaret Atwood, Nadya from Pussy Riot, Index chair Sir Trevor Phillips and Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore to read lines from a poem he wrote from prison. We’ve sent letters to him and to politicians. We’ve published a letter of his too, written on the day of his trial. If anything gives a sense of his character – kind, generous, optimistic – it is this.
But still, he is in prison. For doing nothing. No, for doing something heroic – helping protesters following the fraudulent election back in 2020.
That’s not to say what we’ve done has been in vain. For Andrei and his family, there has been comfort in knowing he has not been forgotten, and comfort in the knowledge that one day he will walk free. We hope that day comes soon.
