“Under the conditions of my release from the penal colony on September 14, 2011, I had to be permanently controlled by the police and secret services,” says Aliaksandr Atroshchankau, activist of the European Belarus and aide of former presidential candidate Andrej Sannikau.
Atroshchankau has recently revealed that he escaped from Belarus in early September as he feared persecutions.
“Several days before the opposition actions [during the parliamentary elections campaign — NN] my house was literally surrounded,” Charter'97 quotes Atroshchankau who calls himself “one of the initiators of the boycott campaign”.
“Yet I resumed my civil activity, didn’t avoid sharp criticism and called on for more pressure on the regime. I was restoring the European Belarus civil campaign which was ruined by the repressions after December 19, 2010. I did my utmost to drag more attention to the political prisoners.
“However I had to abandon several absolutely legal activities as this was either impossible in Belarus or could harm the people involved into those activities,” Atroshchankau says.
“And to be frank, I had my personal reasons. I realised that my newborn son made me vulnerable and I could have failed in an extreme situation, I could have let down people who depended on me.
“Despite that the decision to leave Belarus was made urgently, it however became one of the hardest decisions for me. I believe I will question it until the end of my life.
“Now much has changed in my life.
“I will have to seek for new ways of actions, to learn much new and to understand how to be useful for Belarus and how to keep on fighting in harsh conditions.
“But I will manage to as I love my country. This is true as I proved it with my actions. I have been actively fighting for independence since 1999. Since then, I’ve been expelled from the university, arrested around 50 times, beaten dozens of times, lost my friends, tortured in the KGB, imprisoned...
“Belarus and the fighters for the freedom of Belarus will always remain in my mind, in my heart and in my actions,” Atroshchankau said.
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