Category Archives: Belarus

APPEALS BY RUSSIAN DIRECTOR, PLAYWRIGHT AGAINST EXTENSION OF PRETRIAL DETENTION REJECTED ·

(from Radio Free Europe, 11/20; Photo: Russian stage director Yevgenia Berkovich; Creator: Anton Novoderjozhkin|Credit: Sipa USA via AP Copyright: Sipa USA.)

The Moscow city court on November 30 rejected appeals filed by theater director Yevgenia Berkovich and playwright Svetlana Petriichuk against an extension of their pretrial detention on charges of justifying terrorism with the production of the play Finist-The Brave Falcon, about Russian women who married Muslim men and moved to Syria.

The court upheld a lower court decision in early November to extend the two women’s pretrial detention until at least January 10.

During the hearing, Berkovich expressed gratitude “to all who were involved” for allowing her to travel from a Moscow detention center to St. Petersburg to attend the burial of her grandmother, noted human rights defender Nina Katerli, who died at the age of 89 on November 20.

However, Berkovich said “the act of mercy had tuned into an act of torture” as while being transported to the funeral she spent 25 hours in “a cage of avtozak” — a special vehicle designed for transporting suspects and convicts, which affected her health.

“I did not have warm clothes with me because I was not aware where I was going and my lawyers did not know. It was a cage — a piece of an iron cage 1 meter by 2 meters, in which it is not possible to stand or properly sit. Because of that, it is painful for me to stand up or sit down. It was not possible to sleep there either as there was no heating…. For those 25 hours, I was allowed to get out to a toilet only twice,” Berkovich said.

But Judge Oksana Nikishina rejected Berkovich’s complaints, saying that she should be grateful that she was allowed to attend her grandmother’s burial at all.

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RUSSIA ISSUES ARREST WARRANT FOR UKRAINIAN EUROVISION WINNER ·

(from RadioFree Europe, 11/29; photo: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy (left) poses with Jamala in Kyiv on November 29, 2022. )

The Moscow prosecutor’s office said on November 29 that an arrest warrant had been issued for Ukrainian Eurovison Song Contest winner Jamala, who is of Crimean Tatar origin, on a charge of distributing “fake” information about Russia’s armed forces involved in Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. Earlier this month, the Russian Interior Ministry added the singer, whose real name is Susana Dzhamaladinova, to its wanted list. In 2016, Jamala won the Eurovision Song Contest for performing a ballad that described the brutal 1944 Soviet deportation of Crimean Tatars from Crimea to Central Asia. To read the original story by RFE/RL’s Russian Service, click here.

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FATHER OF SELF-EXILED BELARUSIAN WRITER JAILED FOR REPOSTING ARTICLE ·

(From Radio Free Europe, 11/10; Photo of Sasha Filipenka, from Radio Free Europe.)

Self-exiled Belarusian writer Sasha Filipenka told RFE/RL on November 10 that a Minsk court sentenced his father to 13 days in jail for reposting an article by the Zerkalo (Mirror) website that the government has labeled as extremist. Filipenka wrote on Facebook earlier that police detained his father on November 9 and that it is “obvious that they are putting pressure on me and want me to stop talking to the European media.” The 39-year-old writer is the author of several books for which he has received literary prizes. He fled Belarus after he took part in anti-government protests in 2020. To read the original story by RFE/RL’s Belarus Service, click here. 

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THESE UKRAINIAN ARTISTS, WRITERS WERE KILLED BY RUSSIA’S WAR ·

(Dinara Khalilova’s article appeared in the Kyiv Independent, 10/25/23; Photo:  Ukrainian ballet dancer Oleksandr Shapoval (top left), artist and researcher of Ukrainian cuisine Olha Pavlenko (top right), film editor Viktor Onysko (bottom left), artist and fashion designer Liubov Panchenko (bottom center), conductor Yurii Kerpatenko (bottom right). All of them were killed by Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine. This audio is created with AI assistance.)

“My worst fear is coming true: I’m inside a new Executed Renaissance. As in the 1930s, Ukrainian artists are killed, their manuscripts disappear, and their memory is erased,” Ukrainian writer Viktoriia Amelina penned in the foreword to the published diary of another author, Volodymyr Vakulenko, murdered during the Russian occupation of Izium.

Amelina, who dug up Vakulenko’s notes he had hidden from the Russians in his yard and initiated the diary’s publication, was also killed by Russia’s war. She died on July 1 after being critically injured in a Russian missile strike on Kramatorsk.

Vakulenko and Amelina are among dozens of Ukrainian cultural figures killed by Russian aggression. There is no official record of such losses, but two lists compiled by PEN Ukraine suggest that the full-scale invasion has claimed the lives of at least 65 Ukrainian cultural figures.

Some were killed as civilians in missile attacks or in occupation, others as service members after joining the Armed Forces to defend their country. But all of these deaths have contributed to what experts call Russia’s hundreds-year campaign against Ukrainian culture.

“(Russian President Vladimir) Putin has said that Ukraine has no right to exist as a state, so they (Russians) are trying to erase all evidence of this existence,” Olha Honchar, director of Lviv’s Memorial Museum of Totalitarian Regimes, told the Kyiv Independent.

“If you have a pro-Ukrainian position, engage in culture, language, literature, history — then you are a target for destruction on the occupiers’ lists.”

The Kyiv Independent tells the stories of five cultural figures Ukraine has lost to Russia’s war since Feb. 24, 2022.

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RUSSIAN POET GETS FOUR YEARS IN PRISON FOR RECITING VERSES AGAINST UKRAINE WAR ·

(from Radio Free Europe, 5/10; Photo: Nikolai Daineko.)

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A Moscow court has sentenced a poet to four years in prison for publicly reciting verses condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The Tver district court sentenced Nikolai Daineko on May 10 after finding him guilty of “inciting hatred and calling for anti-state activities.” Daineko, who agreed to cooperate with investigators, was arrested along with two other poets, Artyom Kamardin and Yegor Shtovba, in September after they presented their anti-war verses in public. Kamardin’s girlfriend has accused police of subjecting the poet to sexual violence during his apprehension. Kamardin and Shtovba will be tried separately. 

UKRAINE ARTISTS PUSH BACK AGAINST IDENTITY DENIAL ·

(Juri Rescheto’s report appeared on DW, 4/21.)

View at: https://www.dw.com/en/ukraine-artists-push-back-against-identity-denial/video-65401461

Vladimir Putin claims Ukraine has no national identity and is historically part of Russia. Many Ukrainian artists are pushing back against that narrative. A new Ukrainian ballet has opened in the Latvian capital Riga. The dancers are from Latvia, but the creative team behind the production comes from Kyiv.

‘NOBODY CAN GO BACK – WE ALL FACE JAIL’: THE DISSIDENT THEATRE COMPANY OPENING ADELAIDE FESTIVAL ·

(Kelly Burke’s article appeared in the Guardian, 2/26/23; Photo: … Nicolai Khalezin and Natalia Kaliada of Belarus Free Theatre in London. Photograph: John Sibley/Reuters.)

Belarus Free Theatre currently face years in prison if they return home. Now living in exile, they’re bringing their show Dogs of Europe to Australia

Long before the pandemic, working over video calls was completely normal for husband-and-wife team Natalia Kaliada and Nicolai Khalezin. The founders of Belarus Free Theatre, who arrive in Australia soon to put on the production Dogs of Europe at Adelaide festival, have worked under extreme conditions since the company’s birth in 2005.

Then, the repressive regime of Alexander Lukashenko had already been in power for 11 years. Performing arts companies were owned by the Belarusian government; artistic directors appointed by the country’s ministry of culture. From the moment it was created, Belarus Free Theatre was an illegal entity.

‘Today there are more artists in jail in Belarus than journalists and human rights defenders’ … Nicolai Khalezin and Natalia Kaliada of Belarus Free Theatre in London. Photograph: John Sibley/Reuters

Kaliada and Khalezin directed their actors remotely using Skype and a network of CCTV cameras, installed in a secret rehearsal room. To attend a performance, the phone number of a theatre administrator would be quietly circulated by word of mouth. 

A meeting point would be arranged and the audience would proceed to the secret venue – a private apartment, a vacant warehouses, sometimes a forest – that would be constantly changed to elude authorities.

Audience members were told to bring along their passports: if the performance was raided by special forces, being able to easily prove your identity meant less time in a cell.

In October 2021 Belarus Free Theatre’s actors, directors and audience were all arrested. Released pending a trial, most were facing a prison sentence of up to eight years. The company fled to Ukraine using a border resistance network. When Russia declared war on Ukraine in February 2022, the company crossed the border to Poland.

“Now we are all in different locations, but nobody can go back to Belarus,” Kaliada says from London. “We all face jail. Today there are more artists in jail in Belarus than journalists and human rights defenders.”

According to Pen International, almost 600 writers, artists and cultural workers alone were targeted by armed forces in the aftermath of the 2020 election that reasserted Lukashenko’s dictatorship. Pen estimates that almost one in 10 political prisoners held in Belarusian prisons, as of 2021, are citizens working in the cultural sphere, found guilty of charges such as “extremism” and “petty hooliganism”.

Kaliada now accepts that she, her husband and the dozen or so actors and technicians that make up the permanent company, likely face permanent exile from their home country. Belarus’s collusion with Russia in the invasion of Ukraine has only cemented that belief.

A single production of Dogs of Europe would mean facing a maximum eight-year prison sentence for those involved if staged in Belarus. Copies of the 1,000-page novel by Alhierd Baharevich, upon which the play is based, were seized by the regime when published in 2017. Notwithstanding its political content, the book is written in the Belarusian language; myriad ethnic languages and cultures within the broad sweep of the Soviet Union were stamped out and the Russification of Belarus has continued under Lukashenko. His regime has overseen a renewed crackdown on booksellers and publishing houses specialising in Belarusian language publications, likely to appease the Kremlin.

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‘DOGS OF EUROPE’: A THEATRICAL ‘WARNING SHOT’ ABOUT GROWING AUTHORITARIANISM • FRANCE 24 ENGLISH ·

(from France 24, 12/13.)

The Belarus Free Theatre has been banned in its own country. Its artists now live in exile making powerful, political work like their latest play “Dogs of Europe”. As that piece comes to the stage in Paris, the company’s co-founder Natalia Kaliada speaks to FRANCE 24’s Olivia Salazar-Winspear about the rise of authoritarianism in Belarus and Russia. #DogsOfEurope #BelarusFreeTheatre #NataliaKaliada

THE RELUCTANT SOLOIST: UKRAINIAN REFUGEE ROCKER KATYA GAPOCHKA FORGES A NEW FUTURE IN PRAGUE ·

(from Radio Free Europe) 

Oct 8, 2022 A Ukrainian rock singer who was forced flee Kyiv at the start of Russia’s invasion of her country has been embraced by audiences and musicians in the Czech Republic. Katya Gapochka was invited to open for the veteran Czech band Lucie on their European tour. As a refugee rocker, Gapochka has recorded a new solo album and is using her new-found fame to raise awareness of Ukraine’s urgent need for humanitarian aid.