Letter to Ales Bialiatski by Artak Kirakosyan FIDH Sec. General



Dear Ales, I have been overwhelmed by the most conflicting emotions since I learned this summer of the threat that was hanging over you and of the receipt by the authorities in Belarus of a “present” from Poland and Lithuania containing information about accounts connected with your human rights work and the work of the Viasna Human Rights Center.

 These were feelings of sorrow and
grief that you might possibly find yourself in the very same prison whose
monstrous detention conditions were the subject of testimony that you and I
gathered during our recent trip to Minsk from social activists and opposition figures
who had served time there. These were also wrenching feelings of injustice that
a person who so faithfully and loyally loves his country, his people, and his
culture could be betrayed by “friends” and find himself within the prisons of
this very same homeland. 

But I was also filled with admiration for your uncompromising courage untainted
by any ostentatious heroism. By your readiness to serve your country and bear
the brunt of the attack in order to draw attention to this paradoxically
short-sighted and cruel regime that continues to hang on in the center of
Europe with the connivance of “democratic countries” and, of course, its own
people as well. Any human rights defender is somewhat naïve in his or her
expectations. He or she expects and demands more from people than they are
prepared to do. He or she expects them to be what they still have not
become. 

Knowing the dangers, you returned to Minsk. You didn’t even consider the
possibility of doing otherwise. Naturally, we hoped that it would blow over,
that the people who make decisions in today’s Belarus would have enough
elementary sensibility not to take this step. That they would be smart enough
not to try to take off the street someone who OPENLY speaks about the problems
in Belarus, who OPENLY defends people from the arbitrary rule of officials, and
who OPENLY speaks about the diseases of the governing regime. After all, we
have long known how regimes that rob themselves of the ability to hear the
truth end, how they perish even though they have surrounded themselves with a
wall of security agencies, informers, and bootlickers. But every dictator is
convinced that he is the one who will escape the fate of Beria, Ceauşescu,
Pinochet, and Saddam Hussein. Unfortunately, the Belarusian authorities are
slipping and sliding down into this very same abyss before our eyes. 

You are already in prison. And this means that if the regime can digest even
Ales Bialiatski, then the repressive apparatus will not stop. After it
eliminates “open enemies,” it will move on to “hidden enemies,” since the
apparatus must work and produce results. This means that the apparatus will
blindly seize “rank and file” Belarusians, since the number of dissatisfied
people will grow, but no one will be able to speak openly, like you. 

But no, Valik was right when he said that “they will be ‘overwhelmed’ by
Bialiatski.” I also hope for this. I count on Belarusians. I hope that they
will not be blinded by the fabrications the authorities have made up about the
large amounts of money allegedly hidden away by human rights defenders, who
have selflessly defended their fellow citizens for 15 years, in spite of the
danger that goes along with this. I hope that in spite of the calculations made
by the rotten government, they will not judge you based on their own “lower
selves,” which indeed frequently justify opportunism and indifference because
“everyone is the same and I am no worse.” Regardless of whatever prison you
find yourself in, they will remember you as the person we have long known you
to be—courageous, selfless, a fighter who never thinks of himself, but always
of others. A person who always does what he believes is right, meaning the only
thing possible. 

In friendship, 

Artak Kirakosyan
Secretary General of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH)
Chairman of the Board of the Civil Society Institute
Yerevan, Armenia