Website about political prisoners and their persecutors presented in Minsk

On 29 November another human rights initiative, the informational resource about the political prisoners of Belarus starting from 1989 – palitviazni.info – was presented in Belarus.


During the presentation the human rights defender Zmitser Salauyou stated that the main idea which lead to the creation of this resource was gathering the information about all political prisoners in Belarus starting from 1989. He emphasized that the initiative of the establishment of such a website originated from the regional branches of the Human Rights Center “Viasna”.

This circumstance was also underlined by one of the creative inspirers of the website, young human rights defender Nasta Loika: “It is very pleasant, that the idea which has been in the air for a long time, has finally got its structural implementation in such important and serious product as this website. In the present circumstances, one of the main aims for us is that all these facts shall not disappear in the archives of secret services and courts. It is very important that each of these political motivated cases should find its place in the history.

On the one hand, our foremost aim is to register the stories of the people who had to become our heroes as a result of the criminal prosecution. On the other hand, what is more characteristic for recent cases, in which we can find additional documents and information, we fill in the “Details” part, putting down the names of the judges, prosecutors and policemen who violated the law and will have to bear the legal responsibility it sooner or later. That's why at present we are trying to do our best gathering and storing all these documents, so that the authorities understand that these crimes will not remain unpunished in the future. That's why this website is about the people who are heroes, and about those who persecuted them.

The presentation was attended by the heroes of some publications and video interviews, including the former political prisoners Slavamir Adamovich, the human rights defender Valery Shchukin and mother of the political prisoner Eduard Lobau, Maryna Lobava.

The present public was demonstrated some video interviews and the film “Ales Bialiatski's candle of truth” about the imprisoned head of the HRC “Viasna”.

All in all, there are 176 personalities in the website database as of now. Its creators have been collecting and uploading the necessary information for about a year already and hope that this work would be continued with participation of the Belarusian society. “If we forgot about some political prisoners and/or you know some information about the people who received criminal convictions for political reasons – you can apply to us, and we'll include them in the database,” called Zmitser Salauyou.

In order to make the website maximally accessible, it is maintained in four languages – Belarusian, English, Polish and Russian. Its presentations have been held not only in different cities of Belarus, but also abroad (for instance, in Warsaw) these days.