About 1000 political prisoners to be released from Belarusian prisons, – John Cole
14 December 21:17
About 1000 remaining political prisoners are to be released from Belarusian prisons in the coming months, US Presidential Special Envoy John Cole tells Reuters, "Komersant Ukrainian" reports.
In his opinion, they may be released “in one big group”.
“I think it’s more than possible… We are moving in the right direction, the momentum is there,” he said. According to Cole, the US will then lift most of the sanctions against Belarus. “I think it’s a fair exchange,” he said.
on December 13, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko pardoned 123 political prisoners, including former presidential candidate in the 2020 elections Viktor Babariko, his campaign head Maria Kolesnikova, and Nobel Peace Prize winner human rights activist Ales Bialiatski. In return, the United States lifted sanctions on Belarusian potash imposed in 2021. after their release, 114 prisoners were taken to Ukraine, not Lithuania, as they had been before, and without passports. Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tikhanovskaya said that Lukashenka “replayed everything at the last moment” to show “that he is in control.”
on December 14, a press conference of Belarusian political prisoners was held in a hospital in Chernihiv. Kolesnikova thanked the presidents of the United States and Ukraine, Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy, as well as Lukashenka, for the release. She said that she plans to spend at least a month with her family and colleagues and take care of her health, which has deteriorated over the five years in the colony.
Babariko said that for three years he had been learning to live by “faith” as he was completely deprived of sources of information. According to him, he decided at the end that he would first of all take a month to fill in the knowledge, but after several phone calls the day before, he realized that it could be done “in an hour – it turns out that everything is still going on.”
Human rights activist Ales Belyatsky gave an interview to the Vesna Center after his release. He said that before he was taken from the colony, the manuscripts of two books, all his letters and notes in the criminal case were taken away from him. In the car, Bilyatsky was blindfolded to the border with Lithuania, where he was transferred to a bus with a number of other political prisoners. In the Baltic republic, he finally met with his wife.
“Many Belarusian human rights activists and journalists are still in prison. It is very important to achieve their release, to stop the witch-hunt and the search for ‘enemies of the people’ in Belarus. We must stop the repressions – otherwise the trade in political prisoners will continue indefinitely. I will continue my work. This is my duty to the Belarusian society,” said Bialiatski.
