Minsk can not silence the notes of freedom – Irina Chalip

Prison has greatly enriched world literature. There are prison memoirs, prison prose, prison poems. Furthermore, in Belarus there is no lack of material to put together an anthology of the last words spoken by the defendants in front of the judges. Because since August 2020, more than a thousand political prisoners have already been tried in the Belarusian courts. And according to the authorities, the criminal proceedings in progress for extremism are more than four thousand. So there will be many other defendants who will speak their last words. A collection of several volumes will surely emerge.

Flutist Marija Kolesnikova and lawyer Maksim Znak pronounced them in the Minsk court after the prosecutor’s request to sentence both to 12 years in prison. Finding out the exact words or passages of their speeches, however, will not be so easy: the process took place behind closed doors. Their lawyers, once out of the courtroom, still managed to make the idea, juggling as best as possible not to break the secrecy agreement to which they are bound. Lawyer Vladimir Pylčenko said that Maksim Znak’s speech lasted three hours, enough time to allow the young Belarusian jurist to destroy all the arguments of the prosecution for the umpteenth time and with very high precision (again, because had done the same throughout the entire process). Marija Kolesnikova spoke less and with more emotion: not about the false accusations and her own innocence, but she made a speech on moral choice, on love for others, on the future of Belarus. He thanked the lawyers who were deprived of their license and consequently of the right to practice during the investigation. As he pointedly pointed out, this process, regardless of its outcome, will go down in history.

And it is true. Regardless of the final verdict, this will truly be a historic process. Just like the trials of Viktor Babariko, Sergej Tichanovskij, Nikolaj Statkevič, the journalists of the Belsat television channel Katerina Andreeva and Daria Čultsova, the Swiss citizen Natalia Hersche, the twenty-year-old with disabilities Dmitrij Gopta, who desperately asked his mother to take him home. This mechanism has already crushed many hundreds of Belarusians in its gears. And it will crush thousands more.

According to the Belarusian Attorney General’s Office, 4,600 criminal proceedings have been launched since August last year for “extremism”.

So far there are just under a thousand condemned. But the courts are not yet working at full capacity, they are in no hurry. People wait in prison – and officials like it that way. What does it matter to them whether a detainee is in a pre-trial detention center or a penal colony? In any case, he has years of imprisonment before him.

But the trial of Marija Kolesnikova could not be held at all: the regime had given her the opportunity to leave the country. Indeed, it is not accurate to say possibility: Marija Kolesnikova was literally expelled from Belarus, like the writer Aleksandr Solženitsyn from the Soviet Union in her time. On 7 September last year, Kolesnikova was arrested on the street, loaded into a minibus marked “Communications” and taken away. A few months earlier (in June to be exact) one of the presidential candidates, Viktor Babariko, had been arrested, in whose headquarters Marija was one of the key figures. The same fate that had befallen the other candidate Sergej Tichanovskij (arrested on May 31). Svetlana Tichanovskaja, at the time of Kolesnikova’s arrest, had already left Belarus, where a tacit purge of the operational bases of the now former candidates was underway. Some were jailed, others were insistently offered to leave the country immediately. Those who accepted the exile were taken directly to the border in operational vehicles so that at the last moment they would not have to turn back. Expelled under escort, almost an honor.

Kolesnikova had also been transported to the Belarusian border, the one with Ukraine, along with her colleagues from Babariko’s staff: Ivan Kravtsov and Anton Rodnenkov. As Kravtsov and Rodnenkov later said, Maria had been forced into their car which was already in neutral territory. But then she tore up her passport and ran to Belarus. There she was again loaded into a minibus, this time without the wording “Communications”, and taken to a pre-trial detention center. She was then accused of organizing mass riots and conspiring to seize power. Then no one saw her again, until the trial.

The strange thing is that the prisons in Belarus are now so full that there are political prisoners in every cell. Thus, thanks to the high density of “politicians”, some information always leaks outside. For example, the director of the Press-klub (Press Club), Julia Slutskaja, in eight months of pre-trial detention, found herself together with the leader of the Union of Poles in Belarus Anželika Boris, the human rights activist of the NGO Vjasna. (Spring) Marfa Rabkova, to the employees of the former independent portal Tut.by (closed by the regime last May, today the activity continues here) Lyudmila Čekina and Alla Lapatko, and to the journalist Olga Lojko. Through letters, through lawyers, through those who have left, it is usually possible to trace the patterns of transfers of political prisoners. But there was no trace of Marija Kolesnikova, no one had ever come across her. Either she was held in solitary confinement or her neighbors were carefully selected from among those destined for indefinite confinement.

However, before the start of the closed-door trial, reporters from the state media were allowed into the courtroom for several minutes. And they released a short video lasting a few seconds on their Telegram channels. We see Kolesnikova – no longer blonde, but brunette, always with the same ultra short haircut – dancing in a cell in a black dress. Then the Babariko base of operations Telegram reported that during the transfer to and from the courthouse, Marija would sing something to the escort officers, a medley of songs by the Beatles and Ella Fitzgerald, it seems. And he would also give him lessons on Haydn, Bach and Shostakovich. They say about her: expressive. And no doubt it is. But he is also the most extraordinary personality of last year’s presidential campaign and subsequent protests, in which he practically never participated. She only appeared at the marches several times and then immediately left. But it was enough: his presence was enough to make the city brighter. Minsk empties with each passing day. Some go to jail, others abroad. There seems to be no other option for Belarusians.

A poet of law
Maksim Znak is a totally different personality: brilliant lawyer, bureaucrat, at times pedantic. In the cell Kolesnikova has music, flute, emotions, laughter, dancing. Znak has paragraphs, amendments, paragraphs and sub-paragraphs. But it cannot be said that he is a dry person: in his free time from codes, Maksim writes poems and songs. And until his arrest he was also an Associate Professor of Commercial Law at the Law Faculty of the Belarusian State University. Znak’s students say that during his lectures problems were solved and practiced by making impromptu trials. Furthermore, Znak only addressed his students in one way: he called them colleagues.

Last summer, Maksim Znak simply tried to show all Belarusians how the law is supposed to work, and for that he ended up on trial. This is the opinion of his students. A young woman who graduated in law this year, Ekaterina Vinnikova, at the delivery of the diplomas, uttering words of gratitude to the teachers, also mentioned Maksim Znak. A short time later, instead of at the graduation prom, she found herself in prison, where she spent 15 days on charges of “picketing through the expression of socio-political opinions”. This is just an example to show the kind of reaction that the surname Znak is able to trigger today among officials of any rank.

Among other things, Maxim was present in October last year at the meeting that Lukashenko wanted to organize with political prisoners in the KGB preventive detention center. According to the lawyer Ilja Salej (in Salej they had made the same accusations, but in April he was released on bail and quickly left Belarus), Znak would have tried to convince Lukashenko of the need to free people from prison, because this would have helped. to ease the tension in society. He would have said: “Look how many people there are in the square”. And Lukashenko: “Yes, there were 46 thousand at the peak of the mobilization, we counted them all”. He did not miss even the final thrust: he reminded the jurist Znak that Belarus is a state in which the rule of law applies, in which there are no political prisoners.

Marija Kolesnikova and Maksim Znak last year were among the first hundred Belarusian political prisoners (I’m not talking about the thousands of “administrative” prisoners who passed through the Okrestina street prison) to be tried. Other criminal trials were set up quickly, skillfully, and relentlessly. The case of Znak and Kolesnikova had to be built with particular attention, so that it did not end with a happy ending, like that of the two journalists of the Polish television channel Belsat, sentenced to only two years for having filmed the protests in Minsk on 15 November last. We needed a nice sentence of 10-12 years in a labor camp. And so, after a year of patient work, it’s done!

We are already at the 41st volume of last words. Whether they are one or a hundred or a thousand, it doesn’t matter. The important thing is that Maxim composes poems even in prison. And that Marija in her cell is always the same as last summer, with her hands folded in the shape of a heart. Although there have been no hearts in Minsk for a long time, this has become its trademark. Nostalgic, like a flute solo.

(Translation by Alessandra Bertuccelli)