– Privjet! Can you hear me? Alina, is your microphone humming?
Journalist and media entrepreneur Ingrid Svanfeldt smiles when familiar faces start to appear on the computer screen.
He has organized Belarus-related online meetings every Tuesday for four years.
Ingrid Svanfeldt is sitting at the kitchen table in her home in Sünti. Outside, a beautiful country landscape spreads out.
The idyll quickly breaks when a human rights activist living in exile Leanid Sudalenka appears on the screen to tell the latest news from Belarus.
– Now the administration is also attacking aid organizations. A 64-year-old woman was arrested because she had collected money to support political prisoners.
The others participating in the online meeting quieten down to listen.
Today there are two journalists from Finland, one from Norway and a Belgian human rights activist. They have two Belarusian friends in common, Larysa Shchyrakova and Brand of powder. Both are in prison in Belarus.
Leanid Sudalenka says that the Belarusian authorities have broken into the information systems of non-governmental organizations and are harassing people who send food or money to political prisoners.
Volunteers have to pay fines and hand over all the donations they receive.
Leanid knows how important food shipments are. He himself was a political prisoner and was released in the summer of 2023.
– When I was in prison, I received a food shipment every four months. I don’t know how I would have survived without these helpers.
The meetings started during the pandemic
In the summer of 2020, the corona lockdown that started in the spring began to ease when the number of infections started to decrease.
Ingrid Svanfeldt was at the cabin site when she received a call from an old friend From Alina Belskaja.
– Alina told that something is happening in Belarus, Ingrid recalls.
Ingrid Svanfeldt had gotten to know Alina as a first-year journalism student in Helsinki in 1997. Alina had applied for asylum in Finland because she had been the target of political persecution in Belarus because of her organization work.
In 2020, Alina was worried about the situation in her former home country.
President Alexander Lukashenko had had Belarus in its grip since 1994. In the summer of 2020, he prepared for the presidential elections and used even tougher measures to silence the opposition.
In the West, the media reported unrest and violence. Journalists and their families were persecuted.
Ingrid Svanfeldt wanted to do something. He wanted to help foreign journalists follow the elections and at the same time support independent journalists in Belarus.
He gathered together a small group of Nordic and Belarusian journalists. The group gathered for an online meeting for the first time a week after the August presidential election. The purpose was clear from the beginning.
– The idea from the beginning was to show solidarity.
After the elections, the situation in Belarus tightened even more and journalists began to flee the country. Jauhen Merkis continued to report on political demonstrations and was arrested several times.
Events were followed closely at the Tuesday meetings.
In 2022, what was expected began to dawn on the Tuesday group. Jauhen Merkis and Larysa Štšyrakova were threatened with long imprisonment.
Ingrid remembers how the duo asked again and again that they would not be forgotten. The participants of Tuesday’s meetings promised that they would not be forgotten. In the meetings, they thought together about ways how a person can survive imprisonment.
– We thought about what a dictator can’t take from a person even in prison. One thing is the memories of our conversations together. Larysa and Jauhen know even now that we are with them every Tuesday at 10 o’clock. That’s why I have to continue organizing these meetings, says Ingrid Svanfeldt.
Jauhen and Larysa were arrested
On Tuesday, September 13, 2022, Jauhen Merkis participated in the online meeting organized by Ingrid as usual.
Four hours later they were in touch again. Ingrid needed information about the torture of political prisoners for her own project. Despite the serious matter, the atmosphere was relaxed and friends joked.
– You never seem to sleep, when are you going to rest, Ingrid laughs with a recording of the conversation.
After this, Jauhen Merkis was arrested. Ingrid felt a deep sadness.
– I could not imagine that this would shock me so deeply. But at the same time, my determination only grew, Ingrid recalls.
More bad news was coming. Larysa Štšyrakova was arrested on December 6, Finland’s Independence Day.
Jauhen was sentenced to four years in prison. Larysa received a sentence of 3.5 years. The reasons were political.
Hell on earth in prisons
Leanid Sudalenka spent 2.5 years in prison. He knows how political prisoners are treated.
– It’s hell.
If Sudalenka were to set foot on Belarusian soil now, he would be taken straight to prison. In June 2024, he was sentenced to a new prison term in absentia. This time, he received a five-year sentence in a political legal process for “assisting extremists”.
Sudalenka tells how political prisoners are broken in prison.
– A yellow tag is attached to your clothes so that everyone can see that you are a political prisoner. You end up in the lowest caste in the hierarchy of prisoners. At first, you are thrown into an isolation cell with no mattress and no heating.
Leanid Sudalenka talks about her experiences in a Belarusian prison in a video:
Political prisoners end up in labor camps. According to the human rights organization Viasna, Larysa Shtsyrakova is imprisoned for women in a labor camp near the border with Russia. Jauhen Merkis has been sent to a camp in the eastern part of Belarus.
According to some reports, the prisoners make shoes there.
– There is no heating in the workshops and it is really cold there in winter. You have to work eight hours a day, six days a week, says Leanid Sudalenka, who was imprisoned in the labor camp,
He is a lawyer and thinks every single day what he can do to free political prisoners. The prisoners’ health is deteriorating day by day, Leanid reminds.
– There are prisoners who have been sentenced to 15 years in prison. They cannot survive in the conditions I have seen.
Powder speaks to Sell’s spiders
When yet another Tuesday meeting is over, Ingrid Svanfeldt takes the symbol of the Belarusian opposition movement, the red and white flag.
He says he feels sadness for the fate of his friends, but never despair.
– Sometimes I decide to go crazy. I take the ticket with me to the strangest places and share pictures on social media.
Ingrid believes that positive madness will also save her Belarusian friends.
He looks at the picture of his imprisoned friend Jauhen and smiles.
I remember the story of how Jauhen encountered a spider in solitary confinement.
– He told about his long conversation with the spider. Jauhen sees joy even in small things. This is also why he survives his imprisonment, says Ingrid.
Jauhen and Ingrid still managed to keep in touch when Jauhen had been imprisoned for shorter periods. Now the connection is lost.
But Ingrid and the participants of the online meetings do not forget Jauhen and Larysa. Ingrid Svanfeldt invites you to a new meeting every week.
This article has been translated by ‘s Swedish editor, Svenska on 11.8. of the published story.