“If they imprison me again, I’ll sit.” Pochobut on his release, death row cells, battle for honor in court, and desire to return

Photo: x.com / poczobut

“I’m not going anywhere, because I don’t trust you”

The release began at one in the morning in Navapolatsk. Pochobut, as an experienced prisoner, without unnecessary questions, began to pack his belongings, preparing for the next transfer. Suspicions that something was wrong arose when the guards allowed him to take bottled water with him and change his shoes — an unheard-of luxury for a regular transfer. Instead of Minsk’s “Valadarka” (Pre-trial detention center), he was brought to the Belavezhskaya Pushcha.

“A car was waiting there, I recognized by the markings that it was the KGB. The people around it were also masked. Only one person was without a balaclava, the deputy head of some department. He told me that we were going to freedom. And that if I wanted to, I could always return from Poland, the Belarusian side was ready and willing to agree to this. And I told him: I’m not going anywhere, because I don’t trust you. I explained to him that I had nothing against going to Poland if I could return to Hrodna. But I don’t trust the KGB. They were confused.

Meanwhile, they fed me, I was able to take a shower, they gave me new clothes, and took my rags,” Andrei recounts.

Pochobut says that his uniform was so worn out that he was afraid to wash it too often, because the fabric could tear.

To convince the journalist, the authorities had to bring in “heavy artillery.”

— A man arrived at the scene who introduced himself as an employee of the administration of the President of Belarus. He conveyed that Alexander Lukashenka himself had promised him — and they don’t joke with that surname — that I would be able to return to Belarus. There would be no problems with this. He showed me a photo, from which it appeared that Americans were involved in the exchange.

Anzhelika Borys, head of the Union of Poles in Belarus [arrested in 2021, released a year later from prison], also arrived. But the most important thing for me was that I was able to talk on the phone with a Polish diplomat. I repeated to him that I was ready to leave if I could return. I wanted to talk to him again, but they didn’t let me.

Andrei recounted how they fed him, because the prisoner's appearance after imprisonment was very shocking.

— I became a victim of a therapy, which in prison slang is called "a blow to the fats." Prisoners receive food, the weight of which is strictly calculated according to the resolution of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. And when you are in a punishment cell, there is even less food. Porridge, potatoes, a little meat. Constant hunger. A person just loses weight.

Russian archaeologist Butyagin complained in the Russian media that he was poorly treated in a Polish prison. Because he loves oranges and mandarins, but could not get them in the pre-trial detention center.

— I wonder how he would like the food in the camp in Navapolatsk. I remember a doctor imprisoned there who desperately rummaged through the garbage looking for leftovers. His family had abandoned him, not sending him food,” Andrei recounted.

Court. “I looked them in the eyes with hatred”

Pochobut described his trial in Hrodna, which began in February 2023. The system tried to create an image of a humiliated enemy, ordering him to stand facing the wall in front of the BelTA cameras.

— The guards tell me: “Face the wall.” And I firmly tell them: “No.” The media employees were surprised that I was looking them all in the eyes. I was so furious that if I could set them on fire with my gaze, they would have burned in that hall for coming to film my humiliation.

The next day, the same thing again. The police say: “Face the wall,” the camera enters again, they repeat: “Face the wall.” And I say: “Absolutely not.” That as long as they are filming me, I will not obey this order, because I consider it shameful for myself. It is I who decide how people will see me.

The accusations seemed surreal: the journalist was tried for glorifying the Home Army (Armia Krajowa) and attempting to separate a part of Belarus in favor of Poland.

Declassified NKVD protocols from the 1940s served as evidence. Pochobut fundamentally refused to testify, demanded a lawyer, and delivered his final statement in Polish, which Judge Bubenchyk did not even allow to be translated.

He says he understood he could be detained, but didn't want to flee: "Thousands of our people live in Belarus, and I am with them. I bear responsibility for them. For those Poles whom I involved in the activities of the Union of Poles."

He says he was convinced that if he fled, the authorities would arrest another Polish activist. And so he took it upon himself.

“Special Corridor” and a Cell with a Pedophile

Pochobut’s prison experience also included psychological torture. In Valadarka, they tried to place him in a cell with a man convicted of pedophilia, hoping to spread rumors in prison that would destroy his reputation.

Andrei caused a scandal and ensured the abuser was removed. Later, he was transferred to the "special corridor" — a place where death row inmates are held. Andrei says he was locked up there because he demanded the right to write letters to his son in Polish.

“Three solitary cells for those awaiting execution… I understood where I was when I heard the cells talking to each other. One guy said he had a death sentence.”

And then came the day when prisoners were taken for walks twice a day.

— I realized something was happening in the special corridor that we weren't supposed to hear.

Likely, an execution took place.

Even in such a terrible place, Pochobut found a way to mock the system. When a KGB agent was placed with him, Andrei began feeding him stories from his old articles. The informer diligently wrote down the “secrets” which the curators later, with curses, found on Google.

Navapolatsk Colony

For Andrei Pochobut, the Navapolatsk colony became a place of total control — every step towards dignity had to be paid for with months in solitary confinement.

He recounts that the Navapolatsk colony is squeezed between the giants "Naftan" and "Polymir". This is an industrial zone where the main work for prisoners is the "filthiest" and most dangerous: burning wire insulation.

“You have to burn rubber with a torch. All safety regulations are violated here… Once an EMERCOM drone appeared over the camp — firefighters wanted to check where this column of black smoke was coming from. And it was the prisoners burning insulation. The guards opened fire on the drone.”

According to Pochobut, political prisoners work there without interruption, having only one day off on Sunday, while other prisoners work only two days a week, because there is not enough work for everyone.

They tried to break Pochobut there "according to the rules." He was subjected to searches twice a day, collecting minor infractions: for example, for an electric shaver lying with its charger.

“One prisoner said he had served 12 years and never saw anyone undergo a full search twice a day. And they did it specifically… One inaccuracy, one mistake is enough — and you are sent to the SHYZA (punishment cell).”

SHYZA is a concrete box where people sleep on boards without a blanket in terrible cold.

When Pochobut was finally released from there, the administration prepared a new trap: they tried to force him to clean toilets. In the prison hierarchy, this means pariah status.

“I refused. For this, I was sent to the PKT (cell-type premises). It ended with me spending six months there. They brought me to complete exhaustion, my blood pressure was constantly fluctuating. Political prisoners who saw me clasped their heads.”

“This Polishness is so difficult”

Andrei admits that the memory of those who went through Stalinist camps helped him endure.

He saved himself from the cold with sports: “I could do 140 push-ups in one set.”

The hardest trial was separation from his family. In 2021, the authorities even tried to arrange a meeting with his wife Aksana so that she herself would convince him to leave. It didn't work.

“I always told my wife that she knows who she is marrying. I haven't changed, I've always been this way.”

“I always wanted to see the Navapolatsk Gulag from the inside. And my curiosity was satisfied. I learned how the system works,” he explains.

For him, Lukashenka and his entourage are just cogs in the machine.

And although he understands the risk, the journalist wants to return home.

“If they let me in — good. What if they imprison me again? Well, then I’ll sit. Nelson Mandela sat for so many years, soldiers of the Home Army sat…,” he says.

He says that Polishness in Belarus is a difficult matter:

“One of our activists from the Borderlands, a poet, asked why it is so difficult to be Polish. Indeed. At this latitude, unfortunately, it is so.”

According to Pochobut's forecast, Belarus politically remains in Asia, where power is transferred from father to son, and society degrades to the state of a Turkmen Gulag, where people start fleeing at the mere mention of the word "politics."

Nothing will change in Belarus. After Lukashenka, there will be Lukashenka, he predicts.

“In the autumn of 2022, I spoke with a Turkmen about totalitarianism in his country. He said that even as a Belarusian political prisoner, I couldn't imagine what it was like there. That as soon as you start talking about politics, people just start fleeing. Because the mere conversation could lead you to Owadan-depe. That was the most terrible prison in the entire former USSR, built in the middle of the Karakum Desert. People there had no names, only numbers, and they just disappeared behind the walls, leaving no trace.”

“I have a sad premonition that such an atmosphere may soon prevail here in Belarus too,” he says.

• 20
• 2
• 0
• 2
• 1
• 9
• 0
• 4