VILNIUS, Lithuania (AP) — Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ales Bialiatski arrived for an interview with The Associated Press on Sunday in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, direct from a dentist appointment.
The 63-year-old veteran human rights advocate was experiencing a return to daily life after more than four years behind bars in Belarus. He was suddenly released on Saturday.
Medical assistance in the penal colony where he served his 10-year sentence was very limited, he said in his first sit-down interview after release. There was only one option of treating dental problems behind bars — pulling teeth out, he said.
Bialiatski recalled how in the early hours of Saturday he was in an overcrowded prison cell in the Penal Colony no. 9 in eastern Belarus when suddenly he was ordered to pack his things. Blindfolded, he was driven somewhere: “They put a blindfold over my eyes. I was looking occasionally where we were headed, but only understood that we’re heading toward west.”
In Vilnius, he hugged his wife for the first time in years.
“When I crossed the border, it was as if I emerged from the bottom of the sea and onto the surface of the water. You have lots of air, sun, and back there you were in a completely different situation — under pressure,” he told the AP.
Bialiatski was one of 123 prisoners released by Belarus in exchange for the U.S. lifting sanctions imposed on the Belarusian potash sector, crucial for the country’s economy.
A close ally of Russia, Belarus has faced Western isolation and sanctions for years. Its authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko has ruled the nation of 9.5 million with an iron fist for more than three decades, and the country has been repeatedly sanctioned by the West for its crackdown on human rights and for allowing Moscow to use its territory in the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
In an effort at a rapprochement with the West, Belarus has released hundreds of prisoners since July 2024.
Bialiatski won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022 along with the prominent Russian rights group Memorial and Ukraine’s Center for Civil Liberties. Awarded the prize while in jail awaiting trial, he was later convicted of smuggling and financing actions that violated the public order — charges widely denounced as politically motivated — and sentenced to 10 years in prison.
The veteran advocate, who founded Belarus’ oldest and most prominent human rights group, Viasna, was imprisoned at a penal colony in Gorki in a facility notorious for beatings and hard labor.
He told AP that he wasn’t beaten behind bars — his status as a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, perhaps, protected him from physical violence, he said.
But he said he went through much of what all political prisoners in Belarus go through: solitary confinement, arbitrary punishment for minor infractions, not being able to see your loved ones, rarely being able to receive letters.
“We can definitely talk about inhumane treatment, about creating conditions that violate your integrity and some kind of human dignity,” he said.
Bialiatski is concerned about two of his Viasna colleagues, Marfa Rabkova and Valiantsin Stefanovic, who remain imprisoned, and about all 1,110 political prisoners still behind bars, according to Viasna.
“Despite the fact that prisoners are being freed right now, new people regularly end up behind bars. Some kind of schizofrenia is taking place: with one hand, the authorities release Belarusian political prisoners, and with the other they take in more prisoners to trade, to maintain this abnormal situation in Belarus,” he said.
The advocate vows to continue to fight for the release of all political prisoners, adding: “There is no point in freeing old ones if you’re taking in new ones.”
He intends to use his status as a Nobel Peace Prize laureate — of which he learned in prison and couldn’t initially believe it — to help Belarusians “who chose freedom.”
“This prize was given not to me as a person, but to me as a representative of the Belarusian civil society, of the millions of Belarusians who expressed will and desire for democracy, for freedom, for human rights, for changing this stale situation in Belarus,” he told AP.
“And it was a signal to the Belarusian authorities, too, that it’s time to change something in the life of the Belarusians.”
