Index Censorship published Andrei Aliaksandrau’s letter from prison

Andrei Ali­ak­san­drau

Jour­nal­ist and human rights defend­er
Detained on 12 Jan­u­ary 2021

«I won­der if San­ta will appre­ci­ate the fact that I’ve been eat­ing well and lead­ing a prop­er lifestyle. Thanks to you, and oth­er good peo­ple, my con­science is clear.»

Reader’s note: Andrei Ali­ak­san­drau is a jour­nal­ist and human rights defend­er. He had been a media man­ag­er and deputy direc­tor of the Belaru­sian Pri­vate News Agency (Bela­PAN) pri­or to his deten­tion. In the 2010s, he lived and worked in the UK where he stud­ied media man­age­ment at the Uni­ver­si­ty of West­min­ster, before tak­ing on roles at Index on Cen­sor­ship and Arti­cle 19.

Andrei was detained on 12 Jan­u­ary 2021 along­side his part­ner, Iri­na Zlobi­na. He is being accused of financ­ing the protests in Min­sk by pay­ing fines and reim­burs­ing the costs for deten­tion in tem­po­rary deten­tion facil­i­ties for those detained dur­ing protests in Min­sk. He has since been charged with high trea­son and, if con­vict­ed, could face up to 15 years in prison. He remains in pre-tri­al deten­tion.

The let­ter below was writ­ten by Andrei to his friend Tania at the end of Sep­tem­ber 2021. Andrei writes about the appar­ent absur­di­ty of ask­ing some­one how they are when things are not going well for them, about social media, and about the books he’s been read­ing. He refers to the writ­ings of Svet­lana Alex­ievich, Her­mann Hesse, Milan Kun­dera, Kazuo Ishig­uro, and Haru­ki Muraka­mi in a para­graph that he play­ful­ly refers to as a “col­umn” called “Ali­ak­san­drau Reads”. When he writes “par­don the pun”, he is refer­ring to how he has replaced “in con­clu­sion” (В заключение) with “in cus­tody” (В заключении). The ref­er­ence to “Mazeikis” is pos­si­bly a ref­er­ence to Lithuan­ian pro­fes­sor, Gin­tau­tas Mažeikis.

Authen­tic­i­ty is a recur­rent theme in his let­ter: he refers to “the authen­tic­i­ty of dis­tress” in Her­mann Hesse’s writ­ing and to Milan Kundera’s nov­el Iden­ti­ty (which is known as Authen­tic­i­ty in Russ­ian). He says he’s led a very “authen­tic” life this year thanks to his friends. At the end of his let­ter, he refers to words “with a very flex­i­ble mean­ing”, which also seems to be a ref­er­ence to the word “authen­tic­i­ty”.

Let­ter: 

Hel­lo, Tania!

The tried-and-true scheme worked again: if you want a let­ter, write a let­ter. I just sent you a post­card with a bird, and imme­di­ate­ly I got a let­ter from you! And on the same day as the let­ter from Oksana. Just a mir­a­cle day.

I want­ed to write some­thing like “glad you seem to have recov­ered a bit”. But then I thought that [would] sound strange now. It sounds like an Amer­i­can bud­get action film, in which a cop rush­es up to anoth­er char­ac­ter, who’s clear­ly had enough, and asks: “Are you OK?” And this char­ac­ter has just been run over by a lor­ry, thrown out of a fly­ing plane, or hit by a can­non ball, and the char­ac­ter is lying there bare­ly alive, bleed­ing cran­ber­ry jam. Every­one can see that he’s def­i­nite­ly not okay, but the char­ac­ter – endur­ing the pain – moans in response: “Yes, I’m fine”. What else can he say? Espe­cial­ly giv­en how much of a rub­ber stamp the phrase “I’m fine” is 🙂 That’s just occurred to me now… But I’m just being iron­ic ([ask­ing how some­one is] is about empa­thy, not a cure after all). Real­ly, I hope you’re more or less okay. At least, from what I under­stand, you’re very busy. It’s usu­al­ly a dis­trac­tion.

I’m curi­ous as to what social media looks like these days. Here’s my ide­al social net­work right now: emails. It’s the Face­book of a healthy per­son! Real friends, smart and kind posts, cool pic­tures (some­times whole ins­ta-sto­ries, and kit­tens – kit­tens!), inter­est­ing peo­ple are added as friends, no hat­ing, reposts are envi­able. It’s a fairy tale. I wish every­one could have such social net­works. How­ev­er, the cost of pro­mot­ing it is not small, but this is just a detail. The main thing is that in this form it would teach us to do good. Almost like books.

Books, I go on, yes. I’m glad Hesse stopped by. His essay is actu­al­ly mag­i­cal. In ten pages, the man man­ages to be so pre­cise about so many impor­tant top­ics (not for noth­ing did he get an award, like our Alex­ievich). I was also hooked on many things in it, but per­haps most impressed by how sim­ply and deeply he artic­u­lat­ed the mean­ing of life – and “the authen­tic­i­ty of dis­tress”, which can only lead to answers and solu­tions. And it was so for­tu­nate as well that it almost over­laps with the utter­ly bril­liant Kun­dera with an entire nov­el, Authen­tic­i­ty [Iden­ti­ty], and with Slow­ness at the same time. I read it (I rec­om­mend one-night books), digest­ed it and reread it. It’s so well writ­ten. You’ll enjoy the process. Slow­ness is also fun­ny, plus there’s an awe­some the­o­ry about dancers and their “moral judo”, which remind­ed me a lot of Mazeikis, with scenes and are­nas. All in all, Kun­dera has burst into my per­son­al favourites (The Unbear­able Light­ness of Being is there from his youth, but it’s all love­ly). And an addi­tion to the ranks of cool Japan­ese: I’m adding Kazuo Ishig­uro to Muraka­mi. Style and music. And while Muraka­mi is blues, Ishig­uro is light airy strings. And the blues too. I won­der if it’s a coin­ci­dence or if it’s some­thing about the Japan­ese. I’m still fig­ur­ing it out.

That was our reg­u­lar col­umn “Ali­ak­san­drau Reads” (by request of a reg­u­lar audi­ence) 🙂 In cus­tody [con­clu­sion] – about the weath­er (par­don the pun). Autumn. Autumn is good (although peo­ple on your side of the fence are already com­plain­ing about the cold). New Year is com­ing soon. I won­der if San­ta will appre­ci­ate the fact that I’ve been eat­ing well and lead­ing a prop­er lifestyle. Thanks to you, and oth­er good peo­ple, my con­science is clear. And in front of San­ta too. Wow, it sounds like a pret­ty good year. I think in terms of authen­tic­i­ty, it’s one of the good ones. Just a few words with a very flex­i­ble mean­ing. 🙂

What else is there to say? Healthy, [good] mind­set, warm and relaxed. I hope you are in order on these points too, as are our dear mutu­al acquain­tances. Greet­ings to all. I remem­ber and love all of you. Keep writ­ing.

Hugs.

Ali­ak­san­drau.

28/09/2021