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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
— October – November 2013
T
ATSIANA Reviaka assumes her gov-
ernment monitors her calls. “Go on,
say hello to them”, the -year-old
Belarussian human rights defender
invites her interviewer. At the other end of
the phone-line, thousands of kilometres
from Dublin in Minsk, she giggles. And then
sighs.
She recalls a conversation with a KGB
officer who phoned her and summoned her
to the agency’s office. She asked for an official
letter, setting out why they wanted to ques-
tion her. He said it was on its way and would
be delivered directly to her. He knew exactly
where she was. Such is life under Europe’s last
dictatorship, Reviaka says. “You learn to live
with it”.
Despite this situation, the European Union
is currently debating whether to adopt a more
flexible policy towards Belarus after a three-
year freeze in relations. Reviaka is sceptical
of this initiative.
Belarus wasn’t always as totalitarian as
it is now, says Reviaka, who is an executive
member of the Human Rights Centre Viasna
in Minsk and president of the Belarusian
Human Rights House. She began her work
as a human rights defender in the spring of
, during one of President Alexander
Lukashenko’s first big, violent crackdowns.
Thousands had taken to the streets.
The security services had clamped down.
Hundreds were arrested. There was panic.
People searched desperately for loved ones.
“People needed to step forward”, Reviaka said.
So she did.
With Viasna, she disseminated informa-
tion about people who had been detained,
and provided them with financial support
and food. These days, the organisation still
works with political prisoners, provides legal
aid and documents human rights abuses.
Since that first episode, there have been
sporadic campaigns of mass arrests in Belarus.
The last was in December , when police
grabbed as many as protesters
during demonstrations during the
presidential elections.
The last couple of years have
been quieter, but that doesn’t mean
all is well, Reviaka says. “The largest
protests are always around election
time and at those times, there is also
the most repression. At the moment,
there is a political lull. But repres-
sion isn’t just about the numbers;
any protest, the smallest action, is
clamped down on at the moment”.
On August this year, Reviaka
and some colleagues stood outside
a posh department store in Minsk,
handing out postcards with a por-
trait of their imprisoned colleague, Ales
Bialiatski, a Nobel Prize nominee who is
head of Viasna. It had been two years since
his arrest.
“It was important for us to show that we
remember, that we are protesting, that we
have not forgotten”, she said. She and a col-
league were arrested and sentenced to a fine
of ,, roubles (around €). “We
appealed. My sentence was upheld, and my
colleague’s was sent for retrial. It shows how
arbitrary Belarusian justice is”.
Bialiatski, meanwhile, is serving a four-
and-a-half-year jail sentence for using
personal bank accounts in Lithuania and
Poland to fund Viasna. “Whatever they can
do to limit his contact with the outside world,
they are doing, to try to break his spirit”, she
said. “His wife and her sister saw him for
two hours in August, and had to talk to him
through a glass window”.
The government is also trying to erase
any reminders of Bialiatski outside the
prison walls. In July, customs officers stopped
Reviaka as she was crossing from Lithuania
into Belarus, and confiscated copies of a
book by Bialiatski.
“It is a book about his life’s work as a
literature critic. He is a literary critic by pro-
fession. They are literature essays”, she said.
In September, she was told the government
commission reviewing the seizure had ruled
that the book could “harm the image of the
Republic of Belarus”.
Reviaka’s call not to forget Bialiatski has
acquired even more resonance recently. Over
the past several months, the European Union
has been flirting with a re-engagement with
Belarus after the three-year freeze that fol-
lowed Lukashenko’s crackdown.
In July, Belarus’ Foreign Minister Vladimir
Makey met EU officials to discuss the relation-
ship, after his travel ban was lifted. It was the
first formal visit of a high-ranking govern-
ment official to EU headquarters
since . An official delega-
tion has been invited to the
Eastern Partnership summit at
Vilnius in November.
Different EU officials have
said that closer relations remain
dependent on Belarus meeting
certain conditions, including
the release of political prisoners.
But Reviaka is worried that this
is just talk, and that geopolitics,
economics and boredom with
the stalemate, will push human
rights further down the agenda.
The EU seems to be already
opening a dialogue with Belarus,
despite no progress towards meeting basic
requirements, she said, but it shouldn’t waver
or bend. “We understand that you need to use
strategy, to wield a carrot and a stick, but you
can’t reward somebody if they haven’t met
any of the basic conditions. Do not run out to
meet someone, who hasn’t taken even a single
step in your direction”.
Tatsiana Reviaka will be one of more than 130
human rights defenders from 85 countries
in Ireland 9-11 October for one of the largest
gatherings of human rights defenders in the
world, the Front Line Defenders Dublin Platform,
at Dublin Castle.
Interview with Tatsiana
Reviaka, President, the
Belarussian Human Rights
House by Lois Kapila
Belarus: back to
totalitarianism
People
needed
to step
forward”,
Reviaka
said. So
she did
“
INTERNATIONAL
INTERVIEW
T a tsiana Reviaka
