The largest prisoner exchange between East and West since the Cold War last week was celebrated as a triumph in Washington and Moscow. But the family and friends of the imprisoned Nobel laureate and other imprisoned opponents of President Alexander G. Lukashenko, the long-time dictator of Belarus, remained confused and deeply disappointed.
Belarus participated in the exchange, freeing a German citizen who had been sentenced to death, but did not release any of its nearly 1.400 prisoners classified as political by the human rights group Vyasna, while Russia did.
"We are very sad that no Belarusians have been freed," said Alena Maslyukova, an activist from Vyasna. She added that "Belarus has more political prisoners than Russia: 1.400 in Belarus compared to 700 in Russia," but unlike Russia, Belarus was not under constant pressure to release its prisoners.
That could be because Belarus, which has fewer than 10 million people and has been led by Lukashenko since 1994, is widely seen as an eccentric Russian puppet state and, despite continued terror, does not attract much attention.
However, the omission of Belarusian prisoners from last week's extensive exchange has raised questions about why Lukashenko's opponents abroad, led by Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the self-proclaimed national leader of Belarus, have failed to make the release of the prisoners a priority for the United States and other Western governments.
This is in sharp contrast to the Russian opposition movement in exile, which vigorously fought for the release of Russian dissidents.
Tihanovskaya's office in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, sent a message to Western diplomats last week acknowledging that "there is a perception among some of society and experts that we have not done enough to make the issue of Belarusian political prisoners a priority to ensure their inclusion" in the prisoner exchange. That, as stated, is not true.
Tikhanovskaya's husband, Sergej, is among those in prison in Belarus.
Ales Bjaljacki, the founder of Vyasna who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022, was also excluded from the exchange. He is serving a 2020-year sentence in Belarus for his role in large-scale, nationwide protests in XNUMX, which were sparked by public anger over Lukashenko's claim of a landslide victory - his sixth in a row - in elections marred by fraud.
Mr. Bjaljacki's wife, Natalija Pinchuk, lives in Norway, which, as part of Thursday's exchange, released a Russian spy posing as a Brazilian. She said that it was heartbreaking for her and for the imprisoned Belarusians that none of them were released. She added that she had no idea the exchange was being negotiated until it happened.
Poland, which as part of the exchange freed a Spanish-Russian journalist arrested in 2022 on charges of espionage near the Polish-Ukrainian border, was also left empty-handed. Lukashenko rejected Polish demands to release Andrzej Poczobut, an ethnic Polish journalist and minority rights activist in Belarus, who was sentenced to eight years last year on charges of endangering national security.
"Why is the release of Belarusian political prisoners not a priority for the West?" asked Tatjana Homic, sister of Maria Kolesnikova, who became a symbol of resistance to Lukashenko. Ms Kolesnikova helped lead protests in 2020 and, after being kidnapped by security forces, tore up her passport to avoid being kicked out of Belarus.
That act of brave defiance made her a hero to many Belarusians and, in the event of her eventual release from prison and forced exile in the West, a potential leader of the fragmented opposition movement in exile and a rival to Tikhanovskaya.
Tikhanovskaya, a presidential candidate in the disputed 2020 election, fled to Lithuania shortly after declaring herself the winner of the election. In exile, she fought to reduce the Belarusian leader's brutal control of power and his ever-closer alliance with and dependence on Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Lukashenko has resisted sending Belarusian troops to Ukraine to support Putin's forces, but has allowed his country to be used as a staging post for the Russian military and, with the help of Russian security forces, has put down insurgencies in the country.
Tikhanovskaya supporters claimed responsibility for attacks on Russian military aircraft and railways inside Belarus, but almost all of these attacks were actually carried out by Ukrainian security services. There is no evidence that the government-in-exile she leads has significant support within Belarus.
For some, the omission of Belarusian political prisoners from the exchange underscored the problems of an exile movement that has received millions of dollars in Western aid but has had difficulty making its voice heard inside Belarus or in Western capitals.
Tikhanovskaya lost her main advocate within the US government in 2022 when the term of Ambassador Julie Fisher, who had served as US special envoy to Belarus since 2020, ended. Based in Vilnius herself, she was a vocal supporter of the Belarusian opposition in exile.
In an effort to give Tihanovskaya a boost, more than 200 exiled Belarusian activists gathered in Vilnius last week and declared her the "national leader" until Belarus holds free and fair elections or she steps down.
Supporters of several imprisoned political leaders who are in conflict with Tihanovskaya did not participate in that rally. Among them is Viktor Babariko, a popular former banker who has been in prison since 2020 and, according to some analysts, would have the best chance of defeating Lukashenko in a free election. The Belarusian KGB service arrested him just before the 2020 elections to prevent him from running.
Artem Shreibman, a Belarusian political analyst who now lives in Warsaw, expressed regret that the "Belarusian democratic forces" for years "conducted diplomacy with the West regarding Belarus, but failed to make the issue of political prisoners a priority." That, he added, meant prisoners in Belarus "didn't become part of the agenda" before last week's exchange, although Lukashenko was involved and agreed to release a German prisoner, Rick Krieger.
While Russian activists abroad put the fate of imprisoned compatriots at the center of their lobbying efforts, the Belarusian opposition focused on ousting Lukashenka.
"Unfortunately, many efforts of democratic forces in the last few years have not led to the release of people. For a long time, the priority was regime change, which could lead to the release of all political prisoners," said Kolesnikova's sister.
Russian dissidents abroad also see regime change as their ultimate goal, but, aware that this is likely to take years, have lobbied Western governments to try to secure the release of individual prisoners. They played an important role in pressuring Washington to take up the cases of jailed Russian dissidents such as Vladimir Kara-Murza and Ilya Yashin, two Russians freed last Thursday.
Insisting in its message to diplomats that "the issue of political prisoners remains a priority," Tikhanovskaya's office asked Western governments to provide money to finance the International Humanitarian Fund for Victims of Repression in Belarus, a body set up to support former and current prisoners and their families.
However, there has been an outcry in some quarters that the Tikhanovskaya team, which already receives ample financial support from the West, is now trying to use the prisoner issue to extract more money.
translation: S. Strugar
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