LETTERS FROM LUKASHENKA’S PRISONERS: Katsyaryna Andreeva

Jour­nal­ist
Detained on 15 Novem­ber 2020

«I do not feel anger, resent­ment, or a desire for revenge towards those who made the deci­sion to do this to me. What do I feel? Pity for them fol­low­ing orders.»

Reader’s note: Kat­syary­na Andree­va is a jour­nal­ist for the inde­pen­dent media out­let Bel­sat, who has been detained since Novem­ber 2020. In the months before her arrest, she had been cov­er­ing the nation­wide protests that sur­round­ed the August pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. 

On 15 Novem­ber 2020, Kat­syary­na and her col­league, cam­er­a­woman Darya Chultso­va, were con­duct­ing a live video broad­cast from an apart­ment over­look­ing The Square of Changes in Min­sk. The jour­nal­ists were broad­cast­ing clash­es between secu­ri­ty offi­cials and the defend­ers of a memo­r­i­al to the pro­test­er Roman Ban­daren­ka, who had died some days ear­li­er after hav­ing been beat­en by law enforce­ment offi­cers.

While they were broad­cast­ing, approx­i­mate­ly ten law enforce­ment offi­cers forced their way in and arrest­ed them. Two days lat­er, Kat­syary­na was found guilty of par­tic­i­pat­ing in an unsanc­tioned protest and sen­tenced to sev­en days of admin­is­tra­tive arrest. But on 20 Novem­ber 2020 she was placed in pre­tri­al deten­tion for two months after a court charged her with “organ­is­ing and prepar­ing actions that gross­ly vio­late pub­lic order”. On 18 Feb­ru­ary 2021, she was found guilty of “dis­rupt­ing the work of pub­lic trans­port”, and sen­tenced to two years in prison. Dur­ing the tri­al, images of Kat­syary­na and Darya behind bars cir­cu­lat­ed wide­ly in the inter­na­tion­al media at the time.

Below are extracts from Katsyaryna’s let­ters to her hus­band, Ihar Illyash, a Bel­sat reporter who has also been detained on mul­ti­ple occa­sions in the past. Kat­syary­na tells her hus­band that one of the guards referred to her as a “polit­i­cal” pris­on­er and is there­fore ful­ly aware of their com­plic­i­ty in the regime’s repres­sion. She seems to use the image of “round glass­es […] under the boot” to refer to a repressed intel­li­gentsia. She says she will not allow the image to become a sym­bol for the present. In the final extract, she refers to the Sovi­et singer Mark Bernes’s 1943 song, “Dark is the Night,” which is about home­sick­ness and devo­tion to a loved one.

Extracts from let­ters from Kat­syary­na Andree­va to her hus­band Ihar Illyash:

I often dream about a cer­tain edi­to­r­i­al office – like a com­pos­ite image of all the places where I worked. I walk around the office, turn­ing on and off my com­put­er and my recorder… I am prepar­ing for some kind of press con­fer­ence. I miss my work so much! I have sud­den­ly realised that…

When I was detained by the Spe­cial Forces, they yelled: “You’re going to prison for sev­en years. You’ll be sewing uni­forms for cops!” The deputy head of the police depart­ment used to call me “aun­tie”, “lit­tle one”, push­ing me in the back down the stairs. The cops shout­ed: “You’re not going to do your live broad­casts again! Nev­er again! Were you asked to tes­ti­fy against me?” What idiots. The inves­ti­ga­tor also told me open­ly that no one would report on my tri­al and that I was a “com­mon hooli­gan””. And then when we were being trans­ferred, the con­voy guard referred to us as “polit­i­cal”. I was so shocked by his shame­less­ness that my mouth fell open.

The most sur­pris­ing thing is that I do not feel anger, resent­ment, or a desire for revenge towards those who made the deci­sion to do this to us – to me. What do I feel? Pity for them fol­low­ing orders. A lazy irri­ta­tion that could only be caused by a buzzing fly. Poor, poor lit­tle peo­ple… They must live with all this, and my life is not spoiled half as much as they would like it to be.

I’ve always thought that some­thing like this could hap­pen to us. My whole life has been lead­ing up to it. And per­haps I haven’t had a peri­od of being as in tune with myself as I am now. I think the task I set myself in Novem­ber – not to become embit­tered, not to sink, to pre­serve my ego – has so far been suc­cess­ful. I promised myself that I would not let round glass­es, cracked on the tar­mac under a boot, become sym­bol­ic of the era. No, no, no, not this time. The Belaru­sian intel­li­gentsia will not allow his­to­ry to repeat itself any fur­ther.

My love! The night is dark, as the Mark Bernes’s song goes, but the dawn will be sun­ny and beau­ti­ful. And we shall meet it togeth­er, hold­ing each oth­er with tears of hap­pi­ness… To nev­er part again.