27 Oct 2025 | Belarus, Europe and Central Asia, Lithuania, News and features, Volume 54.03 Autumn 2025
This article first appeared in Volume 54, Issue 3 of our print edition of Index on Censorship, titled Truth, trust and tricksters: Free expression in the age of AI, published on 30 September 2025. Read more about the issue here.
At the end of June, Belarusians witnessed something close to a miracle. After meeting with US Special Envoy for Ukraine Keith Kellogg, Belarusian dictator Alyaksandr Lukashenka “pardoned” and deported to Lithuania a group of political prisoners: five Belarusians and nine foreign nationals.
Among them were former Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty journalist Ihar Karnei and Minsk State Linguistic University associate linguistics professor Natallia Dulina. Most unexpectedly, they also included Siarhei Tsikhanouski, blogger and activist, the first to challenge Lukashenka in the 2020 election. He is the husband of Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who stepped into her husband’s political shoes when he was jailed and who many consider Belarus’s president-elect.
Index went to Lithuania and Poland to speak with these three.
Tsikhanouski was arrested in May 2020 shortly after he announced his plans to run for the presidency in opposition to Lukashenka. He was eventually charged with organising mass unrest and fuelling social hatred, and sentenced to 18 years in prison, with an extra one and a half years added during his sentence for supposedly breaking prison rules. He spent more than two years incommunicado before his unexpected release this summer.
In October 2022, Dulina was put behind bars for public order offences and promoting extremist activities, after she took part in peaceful protests. She was sentenced to three and a half years in a penal colony.
Karnei, a journalist, was arrested in July 2023 and charged with participating in an extremist group. After being sentenced to three years in prison, he was transferred to a penal colony, where he was placed in a punitive isolation cell.
In June, the three with 11 others went through a forced exile and were delivered to the Lithuanian border with bags on their heads, absolutely uninformed. The next thing they heard was: “It’s all right guys, you are under the protection of American diplomacy – you are free.”
Below, Tsikhanouski, Dulina and Karnei share, in their own words, a glimpse of what it means to be a political prisoner in Belarus. And while 14 were released in June, there are nearly 1,300 political prisoners still being held in penal colonies in Belarus.
Siarhei Tsikhanouski
My arrest and criminal case clearly show that I was persecuted solely for my words. I was prosecuted for defending freedom of speech and the right to share information. The charges they invented had no evidence whatsoever – nothing was presented in court. The regime doesn’t even understand what a real court is. What they have has nothing to do with justice.
When you’re tried, Stalin-style, inside the prison itself, behind closed doors, your lawyers can’t defend you. Meanwhile, on state TV, they broadcast false and defamatory claims, but neither I nor my lawyers can respond. Sitting in prison “with my mouth shut,” I couldn’t even make a final statement. People couldn’t hear my evidence of innocence or my arguments – nothing. The regime throws out baseless accusations and hands down long sentences. My trial lasted about six months.
It’s absurd. The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention had already ruled that my detention was arbitrary and therefore illegal. But the regime didn’t care.
This is how the justice system works in Belarus: when the dictator appoints the head of the Investigative Committee, the prosecutor general, the head of the KGB and the ministers, he appoints everyone. He also appoints judges by his own decree. Our constitution states there is a separation of powers, three branches
of government, but in reality this does not exist. He appoints everyone by his decrees, and they carry out his will.
And it turns out that it is impossible to fight this within the framework of the law. Impossible. We suffered not because we fought in some way outside the law, but because we spoke up, exposed and showed it. Accordingly, they engaged their instruments of force and simply put everyone who did not stay silent and spoke out into prison.
Ihar Karnei
From the very start, a segregation process begins in prisons. Those convicted under so-called “extremist” articles – which cover a wide range of charges, from participating in public gatherings to posting comments allegedly insulting the honour and dignity of officials and the president – are stripped of nearly all rights.
Such prisoners are immediately labelled “malicious violators of prison rules”. Often, there is no real basis for this, but it’s simply the procedure: a person is automatically considered to be breaking internal regulations in detention facilities.
On this basis, they are placed on a preventive register, meaning they are under heightened scrutiny from their first day in a penal institution. Usually, they are subjected to all possible punishments: disciplinary cells, denial of parcels and packages from relatives, and bans on any visits.
Political prisoners – marked with yellow tags – are even denied the right to visit the library, use the sports yard or attend church, despite small chapels existing in all colonies. Torture by solitary confinement is common. I spent almost six months in a medium-security colony in Shklou. In total, I spent 160 days in solitary confinement there.
Natallia Dulina
After a long period in prison, people often feel disoriented when they are released. Reactions vary. Some initially experience euphoria and joy at being reunited with loved ones, but may struggle to adjust to the changed reality. At first, they might feel okay, but many have told me that after a while, psychological problems begin. The original traumas don’t disappear – they’re deeply buried but eventually resurface.
I have personally experienced this in two ways. During short administrative arrests, the first time I was released, I felt very bad – scared, as if they were about to come for me again. I went through that fear, processed it, let it out and felt relief. Later, after subsequent short arrests, I was able to resume life as if nothing had happened. But those were very brief detentions.
Now, I have been released outside Belarus. I think if I had returned home, I would feel better – because being in exile brings its own challenges. My case is unusual, as my release was forced. I was taken out of the country without my knowledge, blindfolded, with no explanation of where I was being moved. In the first days, the anger and despair over still having no control over my life overshadowed everything else.
Thanks to the support I received in exile – practical, financial, and from friends – it became much easier for me. And perhaps one of the important things were the words of my loved ones. Now, they too have breathed a sigh of relief, and for their peace of mind, I am ready to face personal difficulties.
21 May 2025 | Belarus, Europe and Central Asia, News and features
The International Day of Solidarity with Political Prisoners in Belarus is marked on 21 May. There are currently more than 1,180 political prisoners in the country, and more than 6,940 people have been sentenced in politically-motivated criminal cases.
Behind bars, people who have shown resistance to Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s regime face inhumane conditions designed to break their spirit and ruin their health. Some are denied or cannot receive necessary medical care. Others are deliberately left to deteriorate. Just yesterday, rights campaigners found out that political prisoner Valentin Shtermer has died behind bars in unclear circumstances.
The date to show solidarity is dedicated to political prisoner and activist Vitold Ashurak, who died in prison in 2021 under unclear circumstances. His body was reportedly returned to his family with his head bandaged, raising serious suspicions about the cause of death.
Another tragic case occurred in July 2023, when political prisoner, famous Belarusian artist Ales Pushkin, died in intensive care after being transferred there directly from prison. According to Belarusian independent media, Pushkin had an ulcer that was not treated in time and developed sepsis, leading to multiple organ failure.
According to the Viasna Human Rights Center, political prisoners Mikalai Klimovich, Aliaksandr Kulinich, Ihar Lednik, Vadzim Khrasko and Dzmitry Shlethauer also died in detention. Recently, Hanna Kandratsenka and Tamara Karavai died soon after their release from unjust sentences – their health deteriorated in prison.
Clearly, lack of proper medical care is a tool to pressure political prisoners. One disturbing example is the case of Maryia Kalesnikava, one of the leaders of the democratic movement, who was sentenced to 11 years in prison. After spending several days in a punishment cell, she was eventually hospitalised with a perforated ulcer and peritonitis. She underwent surgery and lost a lot of weight, but was later returned to forced labour and denied proper aftercare.
The way Lukashenka’s regime holds people hostage and allows the system to operate with such lawlessness and inhumanity is chilling – especially when it comes to people who have been kept completely incommunicado for more than two years. The politician considered by many as the president-elect of Belarus, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, often says that she doesn’t even know if her husband Siarhei (an opposition politician who was arrested) is alive.
According to Viasna, at least 206 political prisoners are at increased risk, with 77 of those having physical health issues and others facing disabilities, mental illnesses or advanced age. These numbers show just how widespread the issue is – and how urgently healthcare is needed.
Leanid Sudalenka, a Belarusian human rights defender and chairman of the Gomel branch of Viasna, was himself a political prisoner and was released in 2023 after serving his sentence (he’s now been sentenced to a further five years in absentia). In his mind, this failure or inadequate provision of medical care is a form of cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment.
“First of all, courts in Belarus do not consider the health conditions of those convicted under so-called extremist or terrorist articles of the criminal code,” he said.
He went on to describe how he suffers from diabetes. “The person in judicial robes did not ‘find’ even a single day of leniency for my illness, although they had every legal right to consider it a mitigating factor. As a result, I served the full term without ever being able to measure my blood sugar levels,” he said.
Inside prison, he witnessed a terrible situation for people in critical conditions: “Even when cancer is diagnosed there, prisoners are not released from their sentences – they die right there in their prison beds.”
Kseniya Lutskina, a journalist and released political prisoner, has a brain tumour. The regime took her pro-democratic activism very personally – Lutskina was a state TV journalist who joined the media workers’ strike in 2020 after the fraudulent election. She was sentenced to eight years, but in August 2024, she was “pardoned”. While in pre-trial detention under criminal charges and already suffering from her condition, she was told directly: “You will die in prison.”
Lutskina shared her experience with Index, describing how access to medical care in pre-trial detention is extremely limited, and that no proper diagnostics can be carried out at this point.
“The doctors there – often just general practitioners – simply don’t have the tools, resources, or authority to provide proper treatment. Their role is mostly limited to emergency care,” she said.
“In some cases, if medical documents can be provided from outside, the detainee may be allowed to receive specific medications. But this requires confirmed diagnoses; otherwise, even getting basic treatment becomes a bureaucratic impossibility.”
She said that for detainees with serious health conditions, it can be nearly impossible to get what they need.
“When political prisoners begin to deteriorate – and many inevitably develop health problems – they are often only treated for symptoms, to the extent possible,” she explained. “It’s not entirely accurate to say there is no medical care, but it is extremely limited and deeply inadequate for serious conditions”.
Lutskina told Index about the harsh environment of prison labour, especially for women. With her formal diagnosis, rather than being exempted from work, she was reassigned to a different type of labour where she didn’t operate heavy machinery.
“But if I fail to meet the daily quota, I’ll be sent back there, to the machines. So, regardless of how you feel – sick or well – you’re still expected to work,” she said.
Even with a medical exemption against carrying heavy weight, this was never guaranteed.
In colonies, prisoners are forced to work, and that labour is physical and often very hard. Health issues are not acknowledged until they become critical. Sudalenka described how the prison administration only pays attention to a prisoner’s health once they faint.
“In that case, they’re wrapped in a blanket and carried to the medical unit. This is especially true for political prisoners, who are not excused from work even with a fever,” he said.
He told Index about the attitude of medical staff towards inmates.
“When I was thrown into a cold punishment cell, where it was impossible to sleep at night due to the cold, I voiced my complaints during a medical personnel round. ‘If you get sick, we’ll treat you,’ they replied – and walked away.”
He said he witnessed a middle-aged man fall ill at the workshop and ask to go to the medical unit. He was told that visits to the doctor are only allowed outside working hours. The prisoner collapsed, and it turned out to be a stroke.
“One of the gravest problems in the Belarusian penitentiary system is the lack of proper diagnostics. This results in frequent – very frequent – deaths,” he said. “And while cancer deaths are somewhat explainable, how do you explain what happened in our colony when a 35-year-old man went to bed after lights out and never woke up? By morning, his body was already cold.”
Healthcare is a basic human right. But in Lukashenka’s Belarus – where the crackdown on pro-democracy resistance has led to a massive increase in human rights violations since 2020 – it has become another means of punishment against dissent.
To find out more about how health is weaponised against political prisoners, explore our Spring 2025 magazine: The forgotten patients: Lost voices in the global healthcare system.
22 Jan 2025 | Belarus, Europe and Central Asia, News and features
Belarusians began 2025 in a state of anxiety. It’s nothing we haven’t seen before – another presidential “election” is approaching, or rather, another dictatorial re-election. There hasn’t been a free and fair electoral process in our country for decades, so it’s not as though we don’t already know the outcome: over 80% for Lukashenka, written in by the Central Electoral Committee.
The atmosphere is tense. Ever since the protest movement began in response to the fraudulent 2020 election, we haven’t experienced peace. Lukashenka took Belarusians’ pro-democratic aspirations personally (as he should) and hasn’t stopped his relentless repression for a single day. There are more than 1,300 political prisoners, with thousands more having already served their unjust, politically-motivated sentences. The leaders of our resistance are held completely incommunicado behind bars, and the only way we know they’re alive is when the regime uses them for propaganda. Maria Kalesnikava, Viktar Babaryka, Ihar Losik – they’re dragged from their cells, dusted off and paraded in front of cameras for twisted manipulations. Yet their dignity and strength remain unbreakable, fuelling our anger and disgust toward their captors.
As the election draws closer, the regime continues its threats. Apart from ongoing mass detentions – many still related to participating in the 2020 protests – Lukashenka announced last month that any public resistance during the “election” on 26 January will be met with a complete internet shutdown. Terrible? Yes. New or shocking? No.
About two weeks before the election, Belarusian independent media outlet Motolko Help reported that access to YouTube, Telegram and Discord was temporarily blocked. The regime is clearly testing out the tactics it used in 2020. For the first time, however, Lukashenka has admitted that the 2020 shutdown was ordered by the regime, not caused by some foreign intervention.
I vividly remember the days of the 2020 election and the beginning of the protests. I was fortunate to be involved in the epicentre of the activities. At the time, I was a culture journalist in Minsk, far from politics or civil activism but not far enough to miss what was happening. When a team of British journalists and documentary filmmakers needed a fixer on the ground ahead of the election, I gladly agreed to help.
It was just days before the election, and many foreign journalists still hadn’t received accreditation from Lukashenka’s Foreign Ministry. A classic dictatorial trick: don’t openly forbid anything, just don’t allow it.
It’s hard to explain how one becomes so desensitised to human rights abuses. The political and civil awakening of Belarusians didn’t happen overnight. We were tired. Tired of the regime’s response to the pandemic, denying Covid-19 and leaving us to fend for ourselves. Tired of seeing Lukashenka’s challengers like Siarhei Tsikhanouski and Viktar Babaryka being detained before they could officially run against the dictator. Tired of watching solidarity chains being brutally dispersed by police. Tired of decades of fake elections.
So, we were prepared. Telegram was boiling with new chats, organisational channels and news coverage – our safe space where thousands of Belarusians tracked real information and self-organised, following protest tips and updates. We were all equipped with VPN apps for security and for reading independent Belarusian media sites, which had been blocked in the country. We gathered our physical protest in dispersed groups, making it harder to track and suppress. But still, we couldn’t anticipate every dictatorial trick up the regime’s sleeve, and the scale of resistance was unprecedented.
On the morning of 9 August 2020, the main election day, mobile providers announced technical issues “due to circumstances beyond our control”. As there was a state-owned monopoly on the internet, private companies had no choice but to comply with the government’s non-public orders to restrict access to the internet.
But the election day plan for Belarusians aspiring for change was clear: go to your polling station, vote for opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, take a picture of your ballot for independent online counting, and if possible, wait outside the polling station for the local commission to count the result.
That evening, many independent Belarusian and foreign journalists gathered at Tsikhanouskaya’s team headquarters. Maria Kalesnikava was also there as another leader of the united team and representative of jailed Viktar Babaryka, and Maksim Znak, as their lawyer. Many representatives of civic initiatives were also at the headquarters. It felt like a community of white knights, leading us to a bright future.
I remember seeing a Radio Svaboda (the Belarusian service from Radio Free Europe) journalist there wearing a press vest with a helmet attached to his belt. For a moment, I thought it was a bicycle helmet, assuming he’d cycled there since central stations on the Minsk metro were closed to prevent gatherings. Then it hit me: it was a protective helmet. That’s when the gravity of our situation truly sank in.
As the evening progressed, the atmosphere grew tense. Tsikhanouskaya’s team collected independent data from polling stations, showing overwhelming support for her and the change she represented. Outside, crowds carrying white-red-white national flags (which were abolished in 1995 in favour of a Soviet-era style flag) marched toward the Minsk Hero City Obelisk. Despite the internet blackout, people had organised and followed earlier calls from Telegram channels to gather in specific parts of Minsk, determined to peacefully defend their votes, voices and rights. Most journalists rushed to cover the growing protests.
Within just a few hours, euphoria gave way to a harsh reality: Lukashenka would never willingly relinquish power.
That night, I heard stun grenades for the first time. As I waited in the centre for my journalist group, who had plunged into the crowds, the ground shook with every explosion at the Obelisk and other parts of Minsk. I lost count of the grenades launched. Without internet access, nobody fully knew what was happening across the city.
For hours, I stayed up, calling friends around the city and country, piecing together information, and relaying updates via SMS to friends living in Lithuania who could see news online and were worried sick about us.
This pattern repeated for three nights. Peaceful protests. Police attacks. Internet blackouts. No decent reaction from the regime apart from the predictable announcement on Monday 10 August: Lukashenka had “won” with 80% of the votes. How surprising.
The most harrowing part was the morning after each night of violence. As the internet partially flickered back on for a short time, Belarusians flooded independent media and Telegram channels with photos and videos they had captured. We saw tens of thousands protesting across Belarus, standing unarmed against fully-equipped riot police. Stun grenades and rubber bullets caused open wounds. Men and women were savagely beaten. Detainees were tortured in police stations, prison trucks and the notorious Okrestina Street Detention Facility. Our cameraman returned with a wound in his collarbone from a stun grenade fragment.
Then came the first fatality from police violence: Aliaksandr Taraikouski. Investigations have found that he was shot in the chest, and the world was horrified alongside us, seeing the footage captured by an Associated Press correspondent. But when the tragedy first came to light, the government tried to claim that he died when an explosive device detonated in his hand, which they said he planned to throw at police. There is no evidence of this.
It was terrifying. It still looks terrifying as I re-watch footage from the protests or documentaries about the events of 2020 in Belarus.
We knew one thing for certain – we couldn’t move forward with Lukashenka. We still can’t. We continue to fight for our rights and freedoms, navigating countless violations by the dictator and his regime. Sometimes, it feels impossible to imagine what achieving our goals might feel like in practice. But as generations of Belarusians have paid a high price for the future, we cannot pass this burden to the next. It is our responsibility, and we rely on democratic countries to stand with us on this path.
There is too much at stake in the world right now, especially in our region. Having one less dictatorship is a victory for all of us.
9 Aug 2024 | Belarus, Europe and Central Asia, News and features
Four years ago today, Belarusian president Alyaksandr Lukashenka claimed victory in the country’s elections garnered more than 80% of the vote. The victory meant a sixth term in office.
That 80% figure is as meaningless as Vladimir Putin’s recent 88% in Russia and Paul Kagame’s patently ridiculous 99.15% in Rwanda. If you’re a dictator it’s just a matter of choosing a number you’re comfortable with.
The average Belarusian was not at all comfortable with that 80% and hundreds of thousands went onto the streets to protest.
Such huge demonstrations did not sit well with Lukashenka and they were met with a huge show of force.
At the time of the 2020 election, the EU said the election was “neither free nor fair”, the UK said it “did not accept the result” and called the subsequent repression of protesters “grisly” while the US Government said “severe restrictions on ballot access for candidates, [the] prohibition of local independent observers at polling stations, intimidation tactics employed against opposition candidates, and the detentions of peaceful protesters and journalists marred the process”.
The demonstrations did not manage to topple Lukashenka, one of Russia’s biggest allies. Vladimir Putin congratulated him on his victory and offered military help to put down protests..
Almost 1,400 political prisoners now languish in Belarusian jails, according to the human rights centre Viasna. That’s one political prisoner for every day that has elapsed since the rigged 2020 election.
A few weeks ago, the UK and 37 other countries condemned the human rights situation in Belarus. Speaking on behalf of all these countries, the Slovenian ambassador to the OSCE Barbara Zvokelj said those jailed “experience torture, inhuman or degrading treatment, acts of physical or sexual violence, lack of basic medical care and privacy, lack of a fair trial, psychological pressure and discrimination, with their cells and clothing marked with yellow tags.”
Those behind bars experience horrendous conditions and include Nobel laureate Ales Bialiatski, the lawyer Maksim Znak and musician Maria Kalesnikava who are all being held incommunicado. They also include our former colleague Andrei Aliaksandrau, who was previously the Belarus and OSCE programme officer at Index.
Also imprisoned is former blogger Siarhei Tsikhanouski who announced his intention to stand in the 2020 elections against Lukashenka but was arrested two days later. In the event, his wife Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya stood against the incumbent. The regime claimed she won just 8.8% of the vote.
In an Index exclusive, the country’s would-be president has written an article for us on the country’s political prisoners. Sviatlana has not heard from her husband since 9 March 2023. She writes, “For my son and daughter, sending letters, postcards and drawing pictures to their father was keeping us morally afloat. They constantly wrote to him but never received any answer.”
Despite many families not receiving answers from their jailed loved ones in Belarus, they are not forgotten.
On Monday 5 August, Index hosted an evening of film and activism in partnership with St John’s Waterloo and Roast Beef Productions, joining a room full of friends and colleagues passionate about free expression, human rights and democracy to mark the fourth anniversary of Lukashenka’s fraudulent elections.
The event’s organiser Index development officer Anna Millward said, “In the belly of the old crypt, we stood in solidarity with, and gave voice to, just some of the many political prisoners in Belarus. Together, we watched the powerful and unmissable documentary The Accidental President (Roast Beef Productions), which charts the presidential campaign of Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya. As the film ended and the lights stayed dimmed, the audience started to softly sing the resistance song Moment: it was an unexpected, moving moment full of hope. A panel discussion followed exploring everything from following Sviatlana’s campaign behind the scenes through to the chilling reach of transnational repression with PEN Belarus President, Taciana Niadbaj; Belarusian poet, writer and activist Hanna Komar; and Roast Beef Productions’ Mike Lerner and Martin Herring.”
She adds, “Finally, we launched our pilot exhibition Letters from Lukashenka’s Prisoners, giving unjustly detained individuals a voice by collecting, translating, publishing and displaying their letters. The exhibition was designed and curated by Martha Hegarty on behalf of Index, and is inspired by a project of the same name carried out by Index in partnership with Belarus Free Theatre, Human Rights House Foundation and Politzek.me between 2021 and 2023.”
As we mark this dark anniversary of Belarus it is poignant to think about the words of the song sung this past Monday.
“We are Belarusians, we are going in peace. In a bright and sunny way.
Destroy the prison walls! If you want freedom, take it!
The wall will soon collapse, collapse, collapse — And the old world is buried!”
Let us hope that is the case sooner rather than later.
