At least 18 others still serving long sentences for protests in 2020 and resistance to Ukraine war
~ Nikita Ivansky ~
The Belarusian regime has recently released anarchist prisoner Nikita Yemelyanov, arrested in October 2019 on suspicion of attempting to set fire to a Pretrial Detention Centre No. 1 in Minsk and sentenced to four years in prison. His sentence under Article 411 was subsequently extended twice, bringing his total to seven years. While in prison, Nikita was frequently placed in a punishment cell, and eventually transferred to a prison regime.
In the past months, several other political prisoners supported by Anarchist Black Cross Belarus have been released and deported to Lithuania, while some of the people from the local antifascist scene were released without deportation. There are still at least 18 anarchists and antifascists serving long prison sentences in Belarus for protests in 2020 and resistance against the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The release is part of Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko’s attempts to improve relations with Western countries, trading political prisoners against the lifting of sanctions. Lukashenko already used this strategy in 2014-15, leading to several years of cooperation between the Belarusian dictatorship and the EU. But even at that time repression in the country continued to be heavy.
In recent years, the regime has been re-arresting anarchists and antifascists who were already sentenced for protests in 2020. With hundreds released after being ‘bought’ by US politicians, Lukashenko managed to ‘restock’ his prisons. For example, recently a person who protested the full scale invasion of Ukraine was sentenced to 3 years.
The regime’s “anti-extremist” department has been promising in its public statements that anarchists will be “rotting in prison” and won’t get on any exchange lists, to say nothing of being released. Yet it is possible that the release of Yemelyanov and others signals a decline in the political polices’ influence on the decisions of the state.
Either way, the Belarusian regime is not moving any closer to reasonable political confrontation with opponents, and continues to persecute anarchists along with all other opposition.
