Правозащитник Алесь Беляцкий. Фото: Алиса Гончар
Nobel laureate and head of the Viasna Human Rights Center Ales Bialiatski commented on Andrzej Poczobut’s return to Belarus and recommended that other Belarusian political refugees not follow his example for now.
Bialiatski stressed that the situation in Belarus has not changed and that repression continues.
“Andrzej Poczobut has returned to Belarus. This shows that he is a brave person who is willing to take risks to achieve his goals. Does this mean that the situation has changed and a thaw has come to Belarus? No,” he wrote on Facebook.
Bialiatski recalled Stalin-era repression and advised political refugees to refrain from traveling to Belarus so as not to end up in a penal colony.
“In the 1930s, writers, including Belarusian writers, were taken to the construction site of the White Sea-Baltic Canal, which was built by political prisoners, to show how labor re-educates ‘criminals.’ Soon, some of them ended up at other Gulag construction sites,” he wrote on Facebook.
“I do not advise other political refugees to repeat what Andrzej did, so that they do not later, while sitting in a penal colony, reproach themselves for being too trusting,” Bialiatski said.
On Sept. 8, former political prisoner and journalist Andrzej Poczobut, as he had promised, returned to Belarus. He crossed the Polish-Belarusian border shortly before noon. Poczobut plans to meet with his family and fellow members of the Union of Poles in Belarus.