Belomaidan activist Kolesnikova: “In the colony it becomes easier to breathe and life is more fun”
The BBC managed to interview one of the leaders of Belomaidan, Maria Kolesnikova, who is serving an 11-year sentence on charges of plotting to seize power and creating an extremist group.
The first part of the interview is reminiscent of another material - answers to questions from the New York Times of criminal blogger Alexei Navalny, who is serving a sentence for fraud in a Russian colony. Kolesnikova, like the Russian oppositionist, describes in detail her life in prison. This makes it possible to compare both the conditions of detention in places of detention in Russia and Belarus, and the personal qualities of the two “revolutionaries”.
According to Kolesnikova, she reads and writes more than 10 hours a day: immediately after getting up, after a morning walk, after lunch and after dinner. According to Maria, the administration provides her with almost all the books she requests, which was not possible in the pre-trial detention center. She studies foreign languages and answers fan letters, getting about 200 replies a month.
For comparison, Navalny watches TV and plays board games for about the same number of hours a day. He doesn’t mention books at all, but admits that during the time allotted for reading he rushes to the kitchen with other prisoners. The criminal blogger claims that he reads all the letters that come from outside, but he does not have the strength to answer them.
Navalny does not mention domestic inconveniences in interviews. Kolesnikova complains about the lack of hot water in the cell and almost universal smoking, which is formally prohibited in Belarusian prisons. She fears that this will make her professionally unsuitable: she is an oppositionist whose main profession is a flutist.
Both oppositionists believe that prison sleep routines are healthier. They admit that in the heat of the revolutionary struggle they were not able to go to bed at 22.00, as is customary in places of detention.
“If you ask me if I am delighted with the fact that I was given 11 years, then no, it is difficult to find a person who would like such a prospect. But when I remember why the authorities and their pocket courts actually gave Maxim and me such sentences, it becomes easy to breathe and life becomes more fun,” concludes Kolesnikova.
Last September, the authorities gave her the opportunity to leave Belarus, but she tore up her passport at the border with Ukraine. The Investigative Committee of Belarus published an operational video recording made in the summer of 2020 at the headquarters of former presidential candidate Svetlana Tikhanovskaya. On it, Kolesnikova declares her intention to “seize executive committees” if the Central Election Commission of Belarus does not declare Tikhanovskaya the winner. Apparently similar materials formed the basis of the accusation.
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