News about Belarusian anarchist prisoners from March 2023

From Anarchist Black Cross Belarus

On March 22, the Volkovysk District Court (Judge Sergeyko N.A.) ruled to transfer Nikita Yemelyanov to a prison regime from correctional camp. We remind you that in March last year, Nikita was sentenced to an additional 2 years of imprisonment, allegedly for malicious disobedience to the requirements of the administration of prison No. 4 in Mogilev, where he was at that time. After that, the anarchist was transferred to correctional camp No. 11, where they systematically began to put pressure on him – regularly placing him in a punishment cell. On March 24, Nikita Emelyanov turned 23 years old. This is his fourth birthday, which he met in prison.

His new address for letters

Emelyanov Nikita Vladimirovich
ST-1, 230023 Grodno, ul. Kirova 1

Sergey Romanov, an anarchist from the Black Flag group, is on trial again, this time under Article 411 of the Criminal Code for allegedly malicious disobedience to the demands of the prison administration.

After the trial in 2021, which sentenced Sergei Romanov to 20 years in prison for a series of direct actions, the anarchist was sent to prison colony No. 11. The administration of the colony repeatedly put pressure on Romanov: he was placed in a punishment cell, and then transferred to a cell-type facility for four months.

On 23 March the court sitting was held in Volkovysk District Court (Judge Mikalai Talashko). Sergey received 11 more months to his initial sentence.

After this trial he was transferred to pre-trial detention center #6 in Baranavichy. He will be kept there until the appeal against the verdict is heard.

Write him a letter
Romanov Sergey Aleksandrovich
IVS, ul. Sovetskaya 46, 231900, g. Volkovysk,
Grodnenskaya obl., Belarus

Fiodar Cherenkov, the husband of anti-fascist Kristina Cherenkova, sentenced to 2.5 years in prison, was detained during the raid in the Gomel region in the second half of March . The cops broke down the door of his flat, and Fiodar himself was later arrested for 15 days.

The politvyazynka Instagram account published drawings by Anastasiya Kukhta, sentenced to five years in prison, based on the poems by anarchist Aleksandr Frantskevich, sentenced to 16 years and 9 months in prison. Anastasiya also got a symbolic “godfather” as part of the #WeStandByYou campaign – Bundestag deputy from the German Social Democratic Party Oliver Kaczmarek.

Those convicted in the anarchist “international criminal group” case were transported to the colonies. Here are their addresses for letters:

▪️ Akikhiro Gaevsky-Khanada and Andrey Marach
IK-17, ul. 1-ya Zavodskaya, 8, g. Shklov, 213004, Belarus

▪️ Aleksandr Kozlyanko
IK-1, ul. Tekhnicheskaya, 8, g. Novopolotsk, 211440, Belarus

▪️ Aleksey Golovko
IK-15, Slavgorodskoye shosse, 183 p/o Veyno, g. Mogilev, 213105, Belarus

▪️ Nikita Dranets
IK-3, g.p. Vit’ba Vitebskaya oblast’, 211322, Belarus

▪️ Pavel Shpetny
IK № 2, ul. Sikorskogo, 1 g. Bobruysk, 213800, Belarus

▪️ Aleksandr Frantskevich
IK-5, ul. Dzerzhinskogo 1, 225293 Ivatsevichi

▪️ Andrey Chepyuk
IK-22, st. Domanovo, a/ya 20, 225295 Ivatsevichi

▪️ Daniil Chul
IK №15, Slavgorodskoye shosse 183, p/o Veyno, g.Mogilov, 213105, Belarus

Anarchist Evgeny Rubashko wrote an open letter in which he explained why the prison administration had sent him to the punishment cell three times (for a total of 24 days) and then to the cell-type confinement for the whole of February. Immediately after his release from the solitary confinement cell, he was put back in the punishment cell for 10 days and then another 7 days.

“I was beginning to forget that I was a political hostage, but the reality of the punishment cell broke into my prison colony routine and reminded me. The internal troops are being held in internal captivity. That’s who they’re at war with.

In my schizophrenic reality I simply refused to do some kind of cleaning, in actuality I went for 10 days to the “cold room” to iron the bunk with my body. Already there, inside, I was “lying on the floor” instead of sitting and warming myself by the radiator, because the house rules forbid me to lie on the floor. My “pass” was extended for another seven days. This is how I spent New Year’s Eve and both Christmases.

Then I was on duty to clean the local station – I cleaned it in 10 minutes instead of the 25. The new snitch is already trying to shine at “work”. Another seven days in a punishment cell. I was again lying on the floor, I could have wiped the dust with my own towel in the absence of a rag in my cell, but such initiatives of the head of my unit were not supported by the head of the colony. I was released to go on with my life.

The next day I was put in charge of the toilet room when I came out of the punishment cell. The “right” convicts paid off their chores with cigarettes, the political ones cleaned everything, except for the toilets. Toilets are a single ticket to “low status” in prison.

Prison colony No.2 is a perfect example of the level of fusion of red* and black*, where only the administration of the colony decides who is or is not low status. In this rudiment, prison hierarchies are deliberately imposed and used as a lever of pressure on the needed prisoners. This is the way the head of the unit told me to write an explanation for refusing to clean the washroom. All these insinuations about my malicious regime violations have now resulted in 1 month of a cell-type confinement. Apparently, I am following in the footsteps of Andrey Maslov, who was going to join Belarusian forces in Ukraine but got caught before he left the country. Je was told directly that he was going to be prosecuted under Article 411 of the Criminal Code*. He, too, had been in prison cell for just one month two days before me. “Everything is going according to plan, everything is for the people…”

I’ve been on this side of the bars for 1.5 years, exactly 3 years into my current official sentence. All this time I have been little surprised by the course of repressive events. But to corrode social relations and poison the souls of both convicts and wardens… In the words of Dovlatov, who by the will of fate tried on the uniform of a warden in the zone: “Hell is ourselves. We are the inmates themselves, the ones who are knocking, tolerating, fearing, it is a common colony world with its own language and notions. My perplexity ca onlyn be expressed by one phrase that is freezing in the Kolyma colds and was written by Varlam Shalamov: “It turns out that a man who commits a meanness never dies” ( from “Red Cross” short story).

I’m all right myself. The cell-type confinement seems to be my second prison love. Boiling water and tea, every good book worth its weight in gold, a hospitable neighbour, unbuttoned robes. I’m at peace, I’m with myself. Advice to myself – in every confusing situation, live as you have lived, and keep on not eating animals. (Evgeny is a vegan and keeps to vegetarian diet in prison).

If you left the country, but want to cook oatmeal in a cup and eat it through a plastic pen, come back!

*red prison colonies – ruled by the government
*black prison colonies – ruled by the respected criminals and the inner prisoner hierarchies
*Article 411 – violations or prison colony regiments, is used to send already convicted to high-security prisons with harsher conditions

Write Evgeny a letter:

Rubashko Evgeny Alexandrovich
ST-8, ul. Sovetskaya, 22A

Zhodino, 222163

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