Media expert Yulia Slutskaya writes from jail about new Belarusian normality

Yulia Slut­skaya, the founder of the Press Club, is charged under Part 2 of Art. 243 “Eva­sion of tax­es and fees on a large scale”. Since Decem­ber 22, she has been behind bars.

In let­ters to her fam­i­ly, Yulia writes about life in jail. The notes on her Face­book page are pub­lished by her daugh­ter Alyak­san­dra.

“I have already told you about the change in the com­po­si­tion of the cell and the fact that I seem to have a friend now. So it did not last long. Already on the fourth day the move­ment start­ed. And Vol­ha was trans­ferred to anoth­er cell. In gen­er­al you should not get attached to any­body here.

Nastya was trans­ferred with us for a short time. She is with us for the time of the appeal and will soon leave for Zhodz­i­na. She’s over 40, she’s one of us. Already con­vict­ed for “hooli­gan­ism”, she got a year and a month. Nastya has five kids. Three of her own, and two in fos­ter care. She worked in an orphan­age. The chil­dren who were in fos­ter care were nat­u­ral­ly tak­en away. And they were returned to the orphan­age. That is the kind of peo­ple we have here. Peo­ple that anoth­er nor­mal state would glo­ri­fy”.

“A WOMAN HAD A STROKE IN PRISON. HER CELLMATES CARRY HER IN THEIR ARMS TO THE TOILET AND TRY TO FEED HER”.

Nastya was trans­ferred to us from the “her­ring” – the med­ical unit. She told a ter­ri­ble sto­ry. There was a woman in the cell with them who appears to have had a stroke while in jail. She is over 50, her name is Alla Ivanau­na. We think it hap­pened in prison because Nastya heard the staff say that she was OK when she was tak­en to prison. Now she can­not walk or speak and her one arm bare­ly works. She lies there all the time. The cell­mates take care of her. They took her to the bath­room on their arms and tried to feed her. They inject her with some­thing, but she is not tak­en care of. Maybe some­one will rec­og­nize her as a rel­a­tive?”

All this aim­less­ness and abnor­mal­i­ty is grad­u­al­ly becom­ing “nor­mal”. It’s get­ting hard­er and hard­er to keep the faith”.