“If this is not torture, what is”. Freed Belarusian political prisoners speak out

In Belarus, political prisoners have become an increasingly central feature of public life since the 2020 uprising against Alyaksandr Lukashenka. That August, after claiming victory in an election widely denounced as fraudulent, Lukashenka faced the largest protests in the country’s post-Soviet history. The regime responded with mass arrests, police violence, and a sweeping crackdown on dissent. Many independent outlets, including Mediazona Belarus, were blocked and banned, with their journalists prosecuted.

The repression soon turned to cruelty verging on the absurd: protest participants were tracked down years later, filmed in staged propaganda videos, and jailed under inhumane conditions. The people who spoke in Vilnius had spent years in prison, with their release following a rare diplomatic agreement after a visit to Belarus by U.S. special envoy Keith Kellogg.

Among them was blogger and presidential candidate Sergei Tikhanovsky, who was arrested in 2020 while attempting to run against Lukashenka. He was later sentenced to 18 years in prison. Speaking in Vilnius, he described being held under a regime of total isolation and psychological pressure.

“For two and a half years, I wasn’t allowed a single letter. No phone calls to family. For five years, I wasn’t allowed to confess to a priest,” he said. “I couldn’t even buy a toothbrush or soap, for years. They’d give us something from time to time, of course. But even a pen refill was impossible to get, seven kopecks [or 2 cents] each, and even those had to be passed along by other prisoners.”

“Cleaning: four times a day. If you’re not scrubbing constantly, back to SHIZO, a punishment isolation unit. They’d come in, run a hand along the wall: ‘White? Not clean. SHIZO.’ It’s a nightmare. What do you call that, if not torture?” he said.

“Justice in Belarus isn’t dead,” he went on. “It just has a hole in its forehead.”

Asked by journalists how his children had reacted to seeing him, Tikhanovsky grew emotional and cried: his daughter didn’t recognise him.

Other prisoners faced similar pressure. Natallia Dulina, a university lecturer, said she was asked to record a short interview for state media but refused. “They offered quick interviews with state journalists. A few people agreed, and those clips were later shown on TV, even in other colonies,” she said. “We had to watch them.”

Dulina also recalled authorities encouraging some inmates to apply for presidential pardons, particularly those nearing the end of their sentences.

Freed activist Kirill Balahonau spoke about Viktar Babaryka, the former presidential candidate who received 14 years. “I was held in the same colony,” he said. “He hasn’t been let out of [an isolation unit] for more than two years. Most likely, they fattened him up before New Year just so he’d look halfway decent in a televised interview.”

Reflecting on his sentence, Tikhanovsky added: “I thought I’d get three or four years, and even then, only after the election. I was lucky to get out after five. I wouldn’t have survived twenty. But right now, every Belarusian political prisoner could be released within a month. Donald Trump could make that happen with a single word. Let’s free these people.”