Among the 52 political prisoners freed by Lukashenko’s regime was the 69-year-old opposition figure Mikoła Statkiewicz. He refused to leave Belarus, and from the border he was taken away in an unknown direction by masked men. In Minsk, the regime’s propaganda machine has already cranked up, spreading false information about his whereabouts.
Mikoła Statkiewicz, together with other political prisoners, was transported to the border with Lithuania. He refused deportation, forced open the bus door, and jumped into the neutral strip between Belarus and Lithuania.
“When we arrived at the border (with Lithuania), Mikoła Statkiewicz practically ran out of the bus and ran onto Belarusian territory. He was detained. Then he spent some time in the border zone. They tried to persuade him to go to Lithuania. He refused,” said Denis Kuczynski, adviser to opposition leader Swiatłana Cichanouska, in an interview with the outlet Zerkało.
When it became clear that Statkiewicz would not change his mind, he was driven away in an unknown direction. This was done by masked men who had been nearby the entire time. “They were standing next to him, about three meters away. No one explained anything to him about where he would be taken. Time passed. We left; he was taken in the opposite direction,” recounted Jauhienij Wilski, a colleague of Statkiewicz.
The 69-year-old former presidential candidate was arrested before the 2020 elections. He was held in isolation in prison for 2 years and 7 months. During that time, his closest relatives received no news from him.
The propaganda machine went into motion
The release of political prisoners was widely commented on in regime media. Minsk’s compliant propagandists claimed, among other things, that the forced deportation was dictated by “economic issues,” so that society would not have to support “troublemakers” in Belarus.
Media also spread the false claim that Statkiewicz crossed into Lithuania and that the situation at the border was merely staged. This is contradicted, among other things, by reports from Lithuanian border guards, who recorded that Statkiewicz returned to Belarus from the neutral zone.
His further fate remains unknown.
Among them are Poles
The Belarusian regime released 52 political prisoners from jail. Earlier, the country’s leader Alaksandr Łukaszenka met in Minsk with the U.S. president’s emissary, John Coale.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Paweł Wroński reported that—according to preliminary information—the group of those released included three Polish citizens, including persons sentenced to long prison terms, as well as eight Belarusian citizens who were journalists—collaborators of Belsat TV and other Polish media.
The state Belarusian agency BelTA reported that Łukaszenka pardoned 14 foreigners, including two Polish citizens. Of the remaining released, six are citizens of Lithuania, two of Latvia, two of Germany, one holds French citizenship and one—British citizenship. Independent media named the Lithuanian citizen Elena Ramanauskiene and the wife of a British diplomat, Julia Fener, who is also a British citizen.
Besides Statkiewicz, other Belarusian opposition figures were also said to have regained their freedom on Thursday, including the philosopher Uładzimir Mackiewicz, activist Mikoła Dziadok, and blogger Ihar Łosik.