Jap and Southern Europe correspondent
EPASergei Tikhanovsky has barely spoken for greater than 5 years.
All that point he was held in solitary confinement in a excessive safety Belarusian jail for daring to face as much as a dictator.
Now the previous opposition blogger is free, and phrases stream out of him so shortly that his ideas typically wrestle to maintain up.
“The restriction on talking was the toughest factor,” Sergei confided after we met in Vilnius very quickly after his shock launch.
“When you’ll be able to’t say or write something, you’ll be able to’t discuss to anybody and also you’re simply trapped in a cell – that is the hardest factor – not the restriction on motion.”
Sergei is now in enforced exile, freed together with 13 different political prisoners after a senior US delegation paid a uncommon go to to the authoritarian ruler of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko.
Once I ask concerning the reunion along with his household, Sergei lifts a hand to his face and weeps.
His daughter was solely 4 when he was arrested.
“She did not recognise me,” he manages ultimately, after a protracted pause. “Then she threw herself into my arms and we hugged for a very long time.”
Sergei’s transformation since his arrest is surprising.
Again in 2020 he was stocky and bearded. Now the face beneath his close-shaven head is gaunt. He says he is misplaced virtually 60kg (132 kilos) in jail, the place he spent countless weeks in punishment cells.
“Bodily I am half the dimensions and half the burden,” Sergei says. “However my spirit just isn’t damaged. Possibly it is even stronger.”
“Earlier than I would solely heard of the crimes of this regime, however now I’ve seen them first-hand and now we have to battle that.”
Till final week, Sergei Tikhanovsky was some of the distinguished political prisoners in Belarus.
Forward of the 2020 presidential election he developed an enormous YouTube following by filming candid interviews about individuals’s complaints and issues.
Then he tried to register to run himself, waving a large slipper and calling on Belarusians to “Cease the Cockroach!”.
“I used to be utilizing the prospect to indicate that it is not possible to win democratically in Belarus,” Sergei explains. “I wished to indicate that the elections are pretend, and so they arrested me.”
When his spouse, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, went on to run in his place she attracted enormous crowds. After Lukashenko claimed one other implausible victory, these crowds grew to become a mass protest which quickly grew to become mass arrests.
EPAIn jail, Sergei was always singled out for in poor health therapy like the opposite high-profile figures – “those they assume are most harmful, or who they wish to destroy”, as he places it.
“For the final two-and-a-half years I used to be in whole isolation. I did not get a single letter in virtually three years. For nearly three years they did not let me have any telephone calls,” he says.
He wasn’t even allowed to see a priest.
“They’d say: you’ll die in jail. We’re going to preserve extending your time and you will not get out.”
To make issues worse, Sergei was incessantly despatched to a punishment cell – for a mark on the wall or a stray cobweb.
“These cells may very well be three-by-two metres, together with a gap within the ground for a bathroom,” he remembers. “No mattress, no sheet and no pillows.”
He would rise up each hour by the night time to maintain heat with units of squats and sit-ups, then lie on the wood bunk till his legs and arms seized up, and he needed to begin the workout routines once more.
To manage, he needed to empty his mind of all ideas of household and associates.
“You need to put that to 1 aspect,” he says. “As a result of if you concentrate on how they’re and what’s occurring to them, you will not survive.”
It was final August when Sergei began to assume he is perhaps getting out.
That is when the deputy prosecutor started touring prisons and “significantly recommending” that political detainees “write to the dictator and request his pardon” as Sergei places it.
Lukashenko was abruptly eager on wanting merciful and several other dozen had been launched.
Sergei and the opposite huge names, like Viktor Babaryka and Maria Kolesnikova, had been by no means on any lists.
However he by no means entertained the concept of confessing, even to get again to his youngsters.
“I’m no prison,” he explains. “So that will be a betrayal of all who assist me.”
Then final week the US stepped in.
When particular envoy Keith Kellogg travelled to Minsk to intercede for Americans in jail, he emerged with Sergei, too.
For Lukashenko, the assembly with Kellogg was an enormous win diplomatically.
He has been ostracised by Western nations since he suppressed the peaceable protests in 2020.
His energetic assist for Russia in invading Ukraine has remoted him nonetheless additional.
“Now Lukashenko may present some co-operation was beginning, a dialogue with the US,” Sergei says, explaining what Lukashenko acquired for liberating some prisoners.
“That was the value: the beginning of contact with him. As a result of no-one had been partaking.”
Getty Photos & RFE/RLSergei desires nothing greater than for all the opposite political prisoners to be launched, too. There are greater than 1,000 in whole.
In tears, he describes assembly an “previous man” lately who turned out to be a younger buddy, aged past recognition by jail.
“I would give something to get all of them out,” Sergei says. “I believe we must always pay any value. However I do not need them to drop all sanctions.”
Sergei’s spouse, now the chief of the opposition, is overjoyed to have him again along with her and their youngsters. However Svetlana tells me she is cautious of the following US transfer.
“We can’t soften the sanctions till repressions absolutely cease,” she argues. “For 14 individuals launched, 28 extra had been detained instantly in Belarus. For Lukashenko, there isn’t a change in coverage.”
Sergei’s first week of freedom has handed in a whirl of exercise. He has met politicians, made speeches and written to Donald Trump along with his thanks. He has additionally been catching up on misplaced time along with his youngsters – in addition to all of the information he has missed in isolation.
However what about his ambitions? The final time he and Svetlana had been collectively she was a housewife and he was the political one. So may there be tensions?
“I haven’t got any claims to her position,” Sergei insists. “I do not want that. I simply want a democratic Belarus.”
EPA
