{"id":1544,"date":"2025-06-28T07:20:23","date_gmt":"2025-06-28T07:20:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/waiting-for-others-belarusians-hope-for-more-prisoner-releases\/"},"modified":"2025-06-28T07:20:23","modified_gmt":"2025-06-28T07:20:23","slug":"waiting-for-others-belarusians-hope-for-more-prisoner-releases","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/waiting-for-others-belarusians-hope-for-more-prisoner-releases\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Waiting for others\u2019: Belarusians hope for more prisoner releases"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\tWARSAW: Belarusian exile Asya watched from the sidelines in central Warsaw as a crowd greeted and applauded Sergei Tikhanovsky, the Belarus opposition figure who was unexpectedly released, barely recognizable after five years in prison.<\/p>\n

\n\tA popular blogger, Tikhanovsky, 46, was jailed in 2020, weeks before he was due to stand in presidential elections against Belarus’s long-time leader, Alexander Lukashenko.<\/p>\n

\n\tHis arrest was the opening salvo in a sweeping crackdown that escalated after Lukashenko claimed victory over Svetlana Tikhanovskaya – Tikhanovsky’s wife, who ran in his place – in a ballot widely decried by critics and rights groups as rigged.<\/p>\n

\n\tAsya was among several hundred fellow Belarusians, living in exile in neighboring Poland, celebrating his surprise release under pressure from the United States.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut her mind was with others still incarcerated.<\/p>\n

\n\t“I am happy for those who are freed, but with each release I always look for the names of my friends,” she said.<\/p>\n

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\n\tThere are 1,169 political prisoners in Belarus, according to the Viasna rights group.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe sight of Tikhanovsky – who lost almost half his weight and appeared to have drastically aged behind bars – has given even more urgency to securing their release, Asya said.<\/p>\n

\n\t“Honestly, regime change is needed. But for me, the priority is for people to be freed and for them to be safe,” she said.<\/p>\n

\n\tHaving been held incommunicado since March 2023, many had long feared for how Tikhanovsky was being treated.<\/p>\n

\n\tHis emaciated appearance was still a shock.<\/p>\n

\n\t“I cried all day when I saw him,” said Alexandra Khanevich, a 71-year-old activist who fled Belarus in the wake of the protests.<\/p>\n

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\n\t“My mother went through concentration camps… This is what I thought of.”<\/p>\n

\n\tTikhanovskaya said the couple’s young daughter did not recognize him.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe bones on his face and fingers are visible, and the 46-year-old looks far older.<\/p>\n

\n\t“Only when we heard his voice, we knew it was really him,” said Yulia Vlasenko, who had protested in 2020 against Lukashenko in the eastern city of Vitebsk.<\/p>\n

\n\tOthers said they knew him by his distinctive ears.<\/p>\n

\n\tTikhanovsky has broken down in tears several times when talking about his ordeal in prison, describing alleged torture and being held in solitary confinement.<\/p>\n

\n\tPrison officials had attempted to “fatten him up” in the months before his release by giving him “meat, fats, butter,” he told a rally in Warsaw.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe believes there will be more releases.<\/p>\n

\n\tOfficers from the KGB state security service – which has retained the feared Soviet-era name – were touring prisons pressuring people to sign statements asking for pardons from Lukashenko, he said.<\/p>\n

\n\tMany were hopeful his release could give a new energy to the mostly exiled Belarusian opposition movement.<\/p>\n

\n\tTikhanovsky, who has pledged not to get in the way of his wife, said he has “even more energy” than before he was jailed.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe couple are radically different in style.<\/p>\n

\n\tSvetlana has spent five years touring Western capitals, meeting leaders in polished suits.<\/p>\n

\n\tSergei is known for his tongue-in-cheek colloquialisms, having famously called Lukashenko a “cockroach” in one YouTube broadcast.<\/p>\n

\n\t“Svetlana is more of a diplomat… Sergei is like from the street,” said protester Alexandra Dobrovaya, giggling.<\/p>\n

\n\tVitaly Moisa, a 42-year-old in construction, said he hoped the pair would be a “double hit” for the regime, with the opposition boosted by Tikhanovsky’s “charisma.”<\/p>\n

\n\tHe drove more than six hours from southern Poland to see “hero” Tikhanovsky.<\/p>\n

\n\t“It’s hard to imagine he was not broken by such conditions,” he said.<\/p>\n

\n\tMany came to the rally with masks on, fearing retribution for their families back home if they were recognized attending the rally.<\/p>\n

\n\tUkrainian Oleg Abrashim – who has never been to Belarus – had come with a mission: to give Tikhanovsky a hand-written letter from his Belarusian girlfriend.<\/p>\n

\n\t“She did not want to come as it will be full of the KGB and she has not got her parents out yet,” he told AFP.<\/p>\n

\n\tListening to Tikhanovsky, he was reminded of the style of someone back home he had voted for in 2019: Volodymyr Zelensky.<\/p>\n

\n\t“I understand why they followed him,” Abrashim said.<\/p>\n

\n\tFrom Ukraine’s Kharkiv, which has been pounded relentlessly by Belarus’s ally Russia since it invaded, he was inspired by the messages of hope.<\/p>\n

\n\t“Belarus and Ukraine should be free,” he said, clutching the letter.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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‘Waiting for others’: Belarusians hope for more prisoner releases<\/sub><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WARSAW: Belarusian exile Asya watched from the sidelines in central Warsaw as a crowd greeted and applauded Sergei Tikhanovsky, the Belarus opposition figure who was unexpectedly released, barely recognizable after five years in prison. A popular blogger, Tikhanovsky, 46, was jailed in 2020, weeks before he was due to stand in presidential elections against Belarus’s…<\/p>\n

Read More “\u2018Waiting for others\u2019: Belarusians hope for more prisoner releases”<\/span> »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1545,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1544"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1544\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}