Autor/Autorin
On 16 August 2024, Lukashenko announced an amnesty for 30 prisoners in Minsk, including 19 political prisoners. Some of them are seriously ill and further imprisonment would have threatened their lives. So this is good news. But there is no reason for a general sigh of relief.
On 24 August, the Belarusian human rights organisation Viasna reported 1,376 people incarcerated in the country’s prisons and penal camps for political reasons. Most of them have been sentenced for insulting the president, treason and terrorism. However, they were actually sentenced to drastic sentences of up to 15 years because they refused to accept the falsified results of the 2020 presidential elections by the Lukashenko regime and organised strikes and demonstrations for democracy.
The independent trade union movement of Belarus was and is an essential part of this movement. Its leaders were thrown into prison after protesting against Putin’s war of aggression against Ukraine and his support for Lukashenko in February 2022. Six female trade unionists and 26 male trade unionists are currently behind prison walls. One of them is Palina Sharenda-Panasiuk, whose fate – on behalf of all the others – will be described in more detail here.
Palina is 49 years old, married and the mother of two children. She was a member of the trade union of workers in the radio-electronic industry and an activist in the opposition to Lukashenko in Brest. She supported the presidential candidacy of Svetlana Tikhanovskaya. She was arrested in January 2021 and sentenced to two years in June for insulting the president and alleged violence against a police officer. In the same year, she was sent to a punishment cell five times for longer periods. In 2022, she was sent to the punishment cell eight times for a total of almost three months. The conditions there are: complete isolation, no heating in winter, forced to sit upright on a concrete bench during the day with nothing to do, sleeping on the bare floor at night without a mattress, pillow or bed linen.
Once she was assaulted by fellow prisoners who had obviously been hired and suffered a bruised kidney and a broken nose. Packages of clothing and medication were withheld from her. At the end of her sentence, Palina was not released but sentenced to a further year in prison for „malicious disregard of prison administration orders“. She was not released at the end of this year either, but was given another year in prison for the same pretextual reason.
Palina’s full story will soon be available in the interactive Fritz Bauer Library.
It is obvious that the regime wants to break Palina physically and psychologically. And in fact, her health is now very poor. She suffers from chronic inflammation of the pancreas. Andrei Sharenda, her husband, explains: „Under the conditions Palina is subjected to in prison, the diagnosis is tantamount to the death penalty. We didn’t know about the diagnosis at first, but we received information that she had abdominal pain and was losing weight rapidly. At one point she only weighed 50 kilos. In all official responses to our enquiries to the prison administration, it was claimed that Palina was healthy and would receive all the help she needed.“ In fact, she is being denied the treatment she needs, according to Andrei Sharenda: „The illness requires a special diet, special treatment, time off work, good prison conditions and careful medical supervision. Palina has been denied all of this. Instead, they have arbitrarily created conditions that are exactly the opposite of what is necessary, for example long journeys from one prison to another and miserable nutrition. They don’t give her the medication she needs. Food that we send her is withheld from her. And they do this in full knowledge of the diagnosis. That’s why I say: they are in fact slowly killing my wife.“
The international trade union movement, of which Palina is a member, has a long tradition of solidarity across borders in the fight for the interests of workers and democracy. „Trade Union Freedom International“, an initiative of IG Metall in cooperation with Amnesty International, aims to keep this tradition alive and translate it into practical action. It is campaigning for Palina. Palina must receive the necessary medical treatment immediately and be freed without delay. And not just her, all political prisoners in Belarus must be released! We are demanding this in petitions and resolutions to the Belarusian embassy. But not only the trade union movement, all democrats, all those who care about freedom and its preservation are also called upon to get involved. Sample texts and an opportunity to sign electronically for Palina’s freedom can be found on the homepage of the IG Metall education centre in Sprockhövel .
