Andrei Sannikov, the alternative presidential candidate in Belarus, and Zmitser Bandarenka, his campaign manager, were arrested in December 2010 merely for gathering on a public square in Minsk to protest the fraudulent elections, and were sentenced to long terms in jail -- and finally released two weeks ago the day before Orthodox Easter Sunday.
As the Estonian President Toomas Hendrik said, the release demonstrated that a united EU policy of sanctions against Belarus worked.
I remember a certain European campaigner who dreamed that we would all be walking around the streets of a free Minsk by Easter Sunday, April 2011. We weren't. Instead, our friends were in jail, being tortured. It was just awful. I urged sanctions, including on business, and he claimed they would "only hurt the people" and "not be effective" -- a very old story. Well, for Easter 2012, we weren't walking on any free streets yet, but at least Andrei and Dima were released, that's something. And it was due to the sanctions, which were in fact increased, and there is no way you can demonstrate them as "harming the people" -- who first and foremost are harmed by Lukashenka and his oprichina, and the Kremlin. The US instituited sanctions on some businesses; the EU sanctions were mainly visa blacklists. They need to hold strong on this until the rest of the prisoners are released.
I was happy they were released, but I realized how bad I had felt every day they were in jail, and how I still didn't feel they were free -- they are essentially under a kind of house arrest. No sooner did he arrive home than Sannikov was summoned to the police and he will have to report regularly -- he is on a kind of parole, as is Bandarenka. They are both in poor health, especially Dima who had a terrible spinal operation while incarcerated.
Lukashenka got on television immediately to warn them that they better not act up, or he'd throw them right back in jail -- ugh. The tyrant also warned that if the European Union ratcheted up the pressure, they'd go back again, as well. So they are hostages. Sannikov's wife and small son are hostages as well, he said; in fact, his wife, Irina Khalip, a respected journalist who was herself jailed and sentenced, is still under house arrest and has had KGB guards even present in her house -- and couldn't come to meet Sannikov in prison as a result, as it was evidently the kind of public event (with lots of news cameras, etc.) from which she is barred. Sannikov still has a foreign passport, but it's not clear to him whether he can travel, and it's not clear whether his family could come with him in any event.
Sannikov and Bandarenka wrote an appeal for pardoning last fall, and have waited all this time for release from prison -- Lukashenka toyed with them, but fortunately the EU and US and other Western nations kept up the pressure (I don't know whether Russia did anything, but I did bring appeals to the Russian ambassador here in NY and raised Sannikov's case with him and other ambassadors including non-Western in the hope something might turn the key.)
It's Sannikov's conviction -- and I share it -- that the EU sanctions are what did the trick to get him out. And now it's important to keep them up, as he notes, to get all the other prisoners released -- notably Nikolai Statkevich, one of the other alternative presidential candidates, and others who took part in elections or dissent about the tyranny of the Belarusian state.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with asking for a pardon; indeed, any political prisoner must do this in order to save himself for further activism and of course save his family from further oppression. I recall Gorbachev was finally prepared to release the hundreds of political prisoners, after doling out only a few in 1986-1987 -- he finally accepted Sakharov's plea that the entire list had to come out. But he insisted that they ask for pardons or clemency. This was a nasty process, as it meant to some that they had to "promise to sin no more". Some of them crossed their fingers behind their backs as they did this, or they quite reasonably pointed out that they indeed would not violate *just* law, but silly laws like Art. 190-1, anti-Soviet defamation, they wouldn't abide by.
Lots and lots of prisoners of conscience in the Soviet era signed these requests or pledges as mere formalities and thought nothing of it, and indeed they shouldn't have. But some minority of "plantados," as they are called in Cuba, resisters who refused to cooperate in any way, refused to sign anything. And then of course pressure was put on them that things would go worse for their families. They held out anyway. Their fellows in the dissident movement urged them to sign and stop being thrown in punishment cells and risking death. Finally the last few came out. They should never have been put through this treatment. There is no shame in signing anything you have to sign to get out of wrongful political imprisonment.
The EU needs to keep harping, however, on the fact that people pardoned are people not rehabilitated or free (the very notion of "rehabilitation" is of course Soviet and wrongful -- there should be a blanket amnesty and be done with it, and they should be free to resume their activities.
Sannikov gave an interview to Novaya Gazeta's Elena Kostyuchenko which I thought contained a very important message: solidarity is what saved him, it's what chips away at the dictatorship. Principled sanctions by outsiders like the EU; then solidarity by those outside and inside the country to the extent possible. That's what does it.
My translation of the interview:
Andrei Sannikov: I was anticipating release every day, every minute. But it happened, like everything in Belarus happens, in an atmosphere of secrecy; they ordered me to gather my things and didn't tell me where I was going. Since I had already gone through many prisons and colonies, it could have been the usual transport or the usual provocation. Then I was shaken down totally...searched, and all my things checked. Then they said "an order has come to release you." I was not shown the pardon decree. That was it. They drove me from the prison colony to the railroad station...
My status is completely unclear. I don't know what happened there and what it was about. They did return my passport -- I can be grateful for that much.
I don't know what will happen with my life now. I haven't seem my family and son for so long, it's like a tank ran over my whole life...
I can hardly tell you anything coherent about what I am expecting. I have to restore my life now. That's the first and main task. And that's all I lived for there -- for the time I would return to my family, and finally that has happened. After awhile, I can say something.
But I realize that I have come out...I have returned to a completely different country. This concerns not only the prices and the new value of the ruble, and what is happening in Belarus. It seems to me all the masks have been torn away. This is a dictatorship, and that's clear to everyone. And the head of the state even admits this. This absolutely changes the situation, it seems to me. But politics are very far from my feelings and senses now.
I'm finding it hard to believe. It's hard for me to hold myself back. It's good that people, friends, Irina's parents have come to visit us. Otherwise, my eyes would be moist. And I would just give way to my feelings. But it's good that I am held back, that people are nearby.
My son...Danka said that he was feeling shy. And I said that I was shy, too. We haven't seen each other in a long time. And believe me, that's the most important thing now.
...Ira wrote and told me, and I hadn't expected it, that there were so many people who suffered for me, worried about me, fought for me. Only solidarity, most likely, saved me. And my family. An enormous thanks to all of you.
There are lots of articles on charter97.org about the release of Sannikov and Bandarenka. Also Sannikov did an interview on an NTV talk show (see above), the transcript in English is here.
Mainly he calls for the release of all the remaining political prisoners, and thanks people for working on his case.
Bandarenka gave an interview to the newspaper Korrespondent saying that as long as Russia backed the Belarus regime, little change would happen, quoting Natan Sharansky, the former Soviet political prisoner now in Israel: "A little dictatorship exists as long as there is support from a big dictatorship."
Poland's Foreign Minister Radoslav Sikorski has said no modernization of Belarus is possible until political prisoners are released:
”Every person is born with certain rights: right to live, to choose leaders. When these rights are taken away, people fight for them. We, the Poles, have experienced the bitterness of captivity, and we carefully perceive the voice of the Belarusian civil society. The reflections over an incentive resulted in preparation of this dialogue. The program the European Dialogue with the Belarusian society for modernization was launched three weeks ago in Brussels. The Warsaw seminar is the first in the cycle. Its purpose is to elaborate ways of modernization of Belarus. The implementation of the reforms should begin only when the people of Belarus want it, and only if they implement them themselves. We don’t want to force you, but Poland wants to help.
Belarus is in urgent need of modernization. In the economic freedom ratings by Freedom House, Belarus is on the 42nd place. Reform deadlock, high prices, no perspectives for the young, a very weak flow of investments. The state capitalism leads to corruption, people’s purses are getting thinner. This controlled, “tamed” economy will sooner or later lead to a grave crisis. Market economy, in its turn, helps establish a free state. Poland wants to become Belarus’ companion, and that is why we launch this initiative."
This is a variation of the ideas expressed by Nobel Prize laureate Andrei Sakharov, physicist and human rights campaigner, who always linked peace and progress with intellectual freedom and human rights, and told the detentniks back in the day that there wouldn't be nuclear disarmament and arms control until there was intellectual freedom and release of political prisoners. Sakharov was probably more of a socialist than Sikorski, but Sakharov didn't think the economy would be fixed by Soviet-style solutions, either. Belarus is in a shambles; people depend on the state for their low-paying jobs and some sort of food rations available even at high prices and that's how the regime persists. Lukashenka can keep pointing to the economic wrenchings of Russia or Ukraine and get people to cling to him.
As Index on Censorship has said, Sannikov and Bandarenka are released, but Belarus is still not free...
