Vice-President of the Belarusian Congress of Democratic Trade Unions (BKDP) Siarhei Antusevich has shared with “Salidarnast” a story of living conditions in Belarusian pre-trial detention wards and penal colonies, of broken lives, “Stolypin’s railway cars” and handcuffed political prisoners, of “deliberate offenders”, the new “zona”, and the “Black Spot” one gets upon release. And yet, of hope.
On April 19, 2025, the campaign “Trade unionism is not extremism!” will run an “Action Day for Trade Union Rights and Democracy in Belarus” demanding the release of imprisoned Belarusian union leaders.
The campaign was launched to focus the international community’s attention on the situation of workers’ rights in Belarus. The country faces police terror, torture and persecution of all opponents of Lukashenka’s dictatorial regime, including trade union activists.
The campaign calls for the release of trade union and other political prisoners, an end to repressions against union activists, and the restoration of guarantees for legal operation of independent unions.
The campaign is organized by the “Salidarnast” Association which provides support to union activists and was launched to mark the anniversary of anti-union pogroms perpetrated by Lukashenka’s regime in 2022.
Siarhai Antusevich is the Vice-President of the Belarusian Congress of Independent Trade Unions (BKDP). For ten years he was the head of the independent workplace union at the “Grodno Azot” nitrogen fertilizer plant.
He was detained on April 19, 2025. He was charged, together with his colleagues Aliaksander Yarashuk and Irina But-Husayim, under Article 342 of the country’s Criminal Code (organizing and preparing actions that grossly violate public order or active participating therein).
The court sentenced him to two years of low security penal colony. On April 21, 2023, the Ministry of Interior put him on the “extremists list”. He was released on October 31, 2023.
— Rephrasing the title of a famous Hollywood film, one can say that life in Belarus today follows the logo of “Forward to the Past”. I believe you have felt it in full measure.
— My BKDP colleagues and I understood only too well that the year 2020 actually marked the beginning of an all-out war against the civil society, not just the trade unions. And the authorities were bent on destroying all organizations that harboured alternative concepts of how the situation was to develop in the country.
We would not fence-sit and just watch the developments, which was indeed the reason for our persecution. I remember the day of April 19, 2023, well when about a dozen men rushed into our office, shouting “Hands off your computers”!
Aliaksander Yarashuk (BKDP President – S.) and I were instantly handcuffed. I was seated with my face to a wall and two guys took position at my side, making sure that I did not turn my head to see what was going on behind my back.
Then, the man in charge of the procedure started reading out the charges against us, a whole heap the Criminal Code Articles. I then tried to remember at least something of what he was saying but the Articles were too many.
Then they took me to the KGB office, the notorious building in the Independence Avenue, and an interrogation of many hours began. Several times I was escorted to the men’s room and, walking along the corridors, I could see my colleagues sitting in all offices where the doors were open.
According to my data, they detained 24 people on that day but the actual number could be larger. Fortunately, all of them did not end up in jail; although, I think who exactly would end up there had been pre-determined in advance.
Late that night I found myself in the KGB pre-trial detention ward, the so-called “American Digs”. It was the first time I saw it with my own eyes.
My cell-mates – there were three of them – told me: keep your clothes on, it’s cold here. The cell window was open at all times because, if you closed it, the walls would instantly become damp and the mold would appear. And that unavoidably meant lung diseases. So, there was no other alternative to sleeping with all your clothes on.
Yet, I was lucky; our cell had a WC and a wash stand. All cells would not have these amenities, and the inmates would be taken to a common WC room twice a day. This, of course, was a kind of additional pressure for both your body and your mind when you had to relieve yourself in front of other people in an open room. I had my share of it later on, though. And I had to get used to it – I mean, what other options did I have?
My colleagues and I spent 10 days in the “American Digs”, then our status was changed from detained to suspects and we were transferred to the Pre-Trial Detention Facility No. 1 – the Volodarka.
There, I met a good old acquaintance of mine, Andjei Pochebut, a journalist and an activist of the Union of Poles in Belarus. Actually, 9 out of 15 inmates of my ward at Volodarka were political prisoners. Including Pavel Belaus (founder and former manager of the Art Siadziba cultural network, and the founder of the Symbal.by national symbols and souvenirs shop – S.) and Aliaksander Fedut (a political scientist, journalist, literature scholar holding a PhD in Philology – S.)
“They give you to understand that they could do with you whatever they wanted”
— Did Volodarka have stricter detention conditions?
— I’d rather call them more abusive. I’ve already mentioned the toilet thing. While in the “American Digs” you would have to announce to your three cell-mates that you needed to relieve yourself, the Volodarka also had its own strictly determined rules for that sort of thing in terms of time and a greater crowd around you.
Another small-time yet unpleasant story was aluminum mugs with no handles. I mean, holding the mug with, say, hot tea in it was impossible. So, you had to either drank it cold or did not drink it at all.
You would make a contraption out of a plastic bottle that would allow you to hold the mug and drink your tea while it was still hot. Naturally, before inspections, we would remove all those from the mugs and throw them away, or they would take them from us.
From time to time, the ward where I spent 9 months received other people who had their own “engineering” solutions like putting your mug in a very thick sock so that it did not burn your hands.
— But why have mugs without handles at all? Was that, what, another way of humiliating an incarcerated person by the State?
— Actually, it’s very difficult to grasp the logic of people who do all these things. Maybe, there’s just none to start with. And yes, this way you were given to understand that they could actually do with you whatever they pleased.
Of course, the absent handle was a small thing, yet those small things added up to a general attitude towards convicts. Well, not even convicts at the time but rather the accused who were yet to hear their sentences in court.
“You should’ve known better and loved our President”
— What was the trial like?
— They tried all three of us together. And I should say they did a quick job of it; the trial started on December 20, and the verdict was already given on December 26.
It is clear that the legal system in Belarus, although one would be hard put to call it legal, has no interest in examining politically motivated cases objectively.
To say nothing of the adversarial bout between the prosecution and the defense. This is totally devoid of substance to a point where your lawyers cannot defend you from anything at all – nobody actually listens to them. It is all decided in advance and the court hearings are nothing but sheer formality.
We were all accused of two episodes of protest march participation in Minsk. While Aliaksander Yarashuk faced an additional charge.
A month after the trial, I was transferred from Minsk to a prison in Mogiliev in a “Stolypin car”.
(This is still the jargon word for special railway cars used to transport persons on remand and convicts. The name goes back to the Soviet times, although it has nothing to do with the actual railway cars that appeared in 1908 when Pyotr Stolypin was chairing the Council of Ministers of the Russian Empire. That type of cars was designed to transport settlers to the Eastern parts of the country, not convicts, and it had no bars either inside or on the windows – S.).
Political prisoners are to be transferred in handcuffs. And although I had heard of it from other people, it was still an unpleasant surprise for me. The interesting thing was that I turned out to be the only political prisoner in the car and I travelled in handcuffs, while all the rest, including a murderer who had received 19 years travelled without them.
Several hours into the trip, I asked the militia escort to somewhat loosen the handcuffs. They took a look and told me that the handcuffs were alright.
I said, “There’s no way I can escape from this car. Maybe, you could remove them altogether?” And one of the escort said to that: “You should’ve known better and loved our President”.
By the way, at the Mogiliev penal colony I later met an acquaintance of mine who had also been transferred in handcuffs. But while my trip took 8 hours, his took 60.
“I was branded a “deliberate offender” after 10 days in the penitentiary”
— What was the most difficult thing to bear in jail?
— When you find yourself in places like that, everything is difficult. Your life is changed in a manner so radical that it is impossible to describe it. And it takes you a very long time to realize that all this is actually happening to you.
For instance, there were controllers there who would come up to cells and open the “feeder” – many have probably seen what it is, they give you food through it – and you are to give them your full name, the Article under which you were convicted and the number of your sleeping berth. As a rule, this would take place twice a day.
After I’ve spent a month and a half in the Mogiliev prison, they came up with a new trick – every week we’d be relocated to a new cell. On the one hand, this was, of course, unpleasant and you were under constant stress never knowing who your new cellmates were going to be, yet on the other hand, I had a chance to see some of my colleagues and meet practically everyone who had been convicted under the so-called “extremist” Articles.
Two days after I arrived to the colony, I got to spend time in a punitive isolation ward.
— What did they put you there for?
— That was a violation of the sentence service procedure. According to the penal colony administration, practically all political prisoners are deliberate offenders, as far as that Article goes.
I became a “deliberate offender” after 10 days of my sojourn at the Mogiliev colony. Twice I had broken the inmate dress code. The first time it was like this: we were cleaning rooms in the quarantine area, poured some ten tubs of water on the floor to wash it and I worked in flip-flops on my bare feet.
When we were done, they told me that I was summoned by the head of our detachment. I was a total rookie with no idea of what was what, so I went to see the big boss in those same flip-flops, just had time to put on a pair of socks. And got my 10 days in the punitive isolation ward.
And I broke the rules for the second time when I took my overalls off in the isolation ward, because it was very stuffy in the cell, so I took it off for a minute, splashed some cold water on my torso, and then put it back on. But the snapshot from the CCTV showing me dressed improperly had already been printed out with the report all written up.
With two such violations under your belt you become a “deliberate offender” and they can transfer you to a prison-like cell at any time and throw the 411 at you.
(Article 411 of the Criminal Code. Deliberate disregard for requirements of the penitentiary administration carrying out punishment in the form of penal custody – S.)
What else can put you in a punitive isolation ward? For instance, all convicts call the industrial area where you work a “promka” and the bag where you keep your belongings a “keshar”. And the moment you say “promka” or “keshar” you use jargon words and this can earn you 10 days in the punitive isolation ward. Well, it is already 15 days now.
Although wardens themselves use similar words all the time.
— And how did other inmates, non-political ones, treat you?
— They treated us OK, because my Article was OK, from the prison point of view. Of course, there were different people but, by and large, I had no problems. Although the administration keeps telling all inmates that they should not talk to us for this could mean a trip to punitive isolation wards for them.
“The Belarusian society has been living through stories of individual lives and whole families destroyed”
— Soon after the Russian troops’ invaded Ukraine, Alexei Venedictov said: “Living in a history textbook is a catastrophe.” Is Belarus also living in a history textbook today?
— I think so. The Belarusian society has been living through stories of individual lives and whole families disrupted and destroyed.
Take the majority of those who were victimized. Their greatest offence was that they took to the streets to participate in a peaceful rally or march which is, by the way, guaranteed by the Constitution, or posted a comment on the Internet.
In prison, I met people who only posted a smiley in social media. For instance, there was this elderly man around 70 who had got eighteen months - or was it two years? - for his smiley.
— According to your information, how many people are currently behind bars as political convicts in Belarus?
— According to the official statistics of human rights defenders, there are over 1200 of them. And that number takes into account some 240 people who were pardoned last year.
But I did meet people who had all the attributes of political prisoners, yet they were not on the human rights defenders’ lists and nobody was aware of them. For the authorities would put whole families behind bars.
I witnessed several situations when, for instance, the husband would go to a penitentiary while the wife would be consigned to “domestic chemical production” (a form of punishment whereby convicts retain their liberty but there are restrictions. A convict is prescribed a time schedule to follow for work and for personal affairs. Inspections can take place daily and at any time of day. – S.).
“You cannot find a normal job because you bear the Black Spot of your “extremist” Article”
— What was your life like after prison?
— Initially, I was quite euphoric that I did not have to wear those black overalls, “glassies” they called them, any longer, that I did not have to get up at 6 am and go to bed at 10 pm sharp, that I did not have to walk around in a column.
But later on you realize that you are going to be forever under the so-called “preventive surveillance”, that you are vulnerable before the authorities and their officials can conjure up a new criminal case against you out of thin air at any time. Even if you do nothing that the current legal system in Belarus can interpret as illegal.
You can keep a very low profile, yet they would still be watching you. And that is probably the most terrifying thing: there have appeared a lot of people in Belarus today whom the current regime sees as unreliable and even traitors. And nobody is much interested in what it is exactly that you did in your former life. You carry a brand, and there is no getting rid of it while this regime persists.
At one point I made a rather unpleasant discovery that my social capital had been completely reduced to naught. I became a non-person for the system, a nobody or, rather, a criminal, a convict, to be precise. Above all else, that was forever. You can argue, you can stop arguing – they could not care less. And when young women at the militia inspectorate where I was obliged to report regularly felt free to drop any pretense to politeness and use dirty language talking to me, I could see that I had simply changed one prison for another.
On top of that, today’s laws of the country do not provide for your life coming back to normal. For instance, you cannot find a normal job because you bear the Black Spot of your “extremist” Article. And this Black Spot is forever with you when you talk to officials and no suits you wear can conceal it.
Also, to land a job today you have to produce reference letters from two previous jobs, and how am I expected to get those when all organizations where I have worked in the past 25 years have been dissolved by the Supreme Court’s decision and their leaders are either in prison or abroad? Nobody can tell you what to do in this situation. So, you just go round in circles.
Besides, after some time I became aware of the high probability of my new arrest and incarceration because new circumstances emerged. And of my inability to engage in something I have been doing all my life – independent trade union work. So, in the end, I made a decision to leave the country.
— Powers that be in the country have remained unchanged for over 30 years now, turning Belarus into a classical autocracy. During this period, so many people have tried to change life inside the country for the better but they all have failed. Did you ever fell like giving up in despair? Did it ever seem to you that all your efforts were futile and that anybody could be handcuffed at any moment to hear then from a guard that you should have known better and loved your President?
— No, I personally have never let my hands drop, but I do understand that so many people in today’s Belarus prefer to live following the routine and safe house rules. Getting up at the same hour every day, going to work, returning home, making themselves busy at their dacha land lots in season. And staying well below the radar.
It is not enough that we as a society were deeply traumatized in 2020; they would show us every single day that there is only one man who can be at the pinnacle of power and that the fate of all other pretenders to that position is more than evident. And that it is only around the one man that the whole system should be built.
At the current stage, my colleagues and I are trying to do union work. And, of course, I would like to be useful both inside my country and beyond its borders. Because the situation in Belarus is not unique but I would not want to see it duplicated anywhere else in the world.
I do not know what future has in store for me and my colleagues but we must try to bring independent trade union movement back to Belarus and make sure that its return is final and irreversible.
Author: Victoria Leontyeva
Read this text in eng
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