Prisoners in exile talk about brutality behind bars in Belarus

Larissa would have been happier to stay in prison for the last four months of her sentence if she could go home after it was up.

Instead, she was bussed across the border from Belarus into Lithuania along with 51 other political prisoners. They were released in September as part of a sanctions relief deal struck between authoritarian Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko and US President Donald Trump.

During the three years spent behind bars for “extremism” and “discrediting” of Belarus, Larisa Shtyrakova missed her mother’s funeral. Now she cannot visit her grave.

She left her son, her home, her dog and all her possessions. Like most released prisoners, Larissa is undocumented and risks arrest if she returns.

“You lose everything overnight. It’s traumatic to think that at 52 you’re basically homeless,” she told the BBC.

In reality, she had no choice.

Veteran opposition politician Mykola Statkevich got off the Larisa bus and refused to cross the border. He has not been heard from since and is believed to have been sent straight back to prison.

The 37-year-old activist Nikolay Dziadok spent five years behind bars and was marked with a special yellow label, which meant stricter control and harsher treatment.

Yellow rather than white tags originally highlighted inmates at risk of suicide or escape so guards could keep a closer eye on them.

But for Nikolai and others, it was used for political prisoners deemed “prone to extremism.” Thousands were jailed in the weeks and months after Lukashenko brutally suppressed mass protests in 2020.

Dziadok recalled how he was placed in solitary confinement for months with inmates in cells on either side shouting “insults and threats of rape, murder and dismemberment” at him.

“They would bang their bowls against the wall for hours, day and night. They wouldn’t let me sleep; it was impossible to read, write or even think,” he told the BBC.

Dziadok is sure that the prisoners acted on the orders of the guards.

“(The authorities) realized that probably the vast majority of us would be released sooner or later,” he said. “And if they were to release this man, they should traumatize him as much as possible so that he cannot participate in political activity in the future.

Solitary confinement is routinely used in Belarus as a punishment against political prisoners for minor “infractions,” such as not saluting loudly enough to guards. It’s a way authorities put psychological pressure on prisoners, rights groups say.

Another political prisoner released in September, Dmitry Kuchuk, said that when he was in solitary confinement, guards tortured him by falsely telling him that his mother had died or that he would soon be released.

The BBC approached the Belarusian Interior Ministry for comment on the claims but did not receive a response.

The solitary cells were small and chilling, said Yevgeny Merkis, a colleague who was arrested before Larisa Shtyrakova and who was released with her in September.

“The floor is tiled, the walls are cold and in winter if it’s above -5C they’ll open the window during the day,” Merkis told the BBC.

“You have a special uniform and you can’t wear anything under it, not even a sweater, everything is taken. At night they roll out a bed for you. It’s just a wooden board with metal edges.”

Nikolai Dziadok said that he learned to do exercises at night, half asleep, to warm up. “My personal record is 300 push-ups and the same number of sit-ups in one night,” he said.

Larisa Shtyrakova has never been placed in solitary confinement and can even walk in the prison yard.

Her former colleague Eugene heard her singing from his cell and managed to pass her an anonymous message scrawled on the bottom of her bowl.

“I’m sitting there eating my porridge and then I see the word trymaysyashe said.

It means “hold” in Belarusian.

She had seen inmate scribbles before, on library books or a bench in the exercise yard. But it was in Belarusian, and she immediately felt that it must have been written by a political prisoner, since they insist on not using Russian.

When she finished eating, she realized that her name was also scrawled on the bowl: “Styrakova, wait.”

It was obviously from someone she knew, although she had no idea that her friend Yevgeny Merkis had scribbled the message if she happened to see it.

“It inspired me so much. There was something almost mystical about it,” she said.

Two years later, they were among 52 political prisoners released in September amid a wave of pardons following talks between longtime Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko and Donald Trump.

In June, opposition politician Sergei Tikhanovsky – husband of presidential candidate Svetlana Tikhanovskaya – was released. Another 16 were released in July.

Trump later called Lukashenko “the very respected president” – a diplomatic boost for a leader whose self-declared victory over Tikhanovskaya in the 2020 election was dismissed as “fraudulent” by the US, EU, UK and Canada.

In exchange for the release of the prisoners in September, Washington lifted sanctions against the Belarusian airline Belavia so that banks could unfreeze its financial assets.

But there is no movement towards a broader political “thaw” in Belarus.

“In Belarus, everything revolves around a circle,” says Mykola Dziadok. “After each wave of protest, round up as many political prisoners as possible and then trade them little by little to thaw relations with the West.”

According to the human rights center “Vyasna”, about 1,220 political prisoners remain behind bars.

Charges can range from insulting the president or participating in an extremist organization to calling for actions that threaten the national security of Belarus.

Larisa Shtyrakova is now adapting to her new life in Lithuania and everything she has, whether food or clothes, has been financed by the Belarusian expatriate community.

But at least now, more than a month after her release, she is finally reunited with her 19-year-old son.