Dear friends!

This website is dedicated to political prisoners – victims of the regime of the Republic of Belarus.

Palitviazni.info website was created and is being expanded to once again remind one of the history of life, persecution and repression against the Belarusian people. And to remind Belarusians in what kind of country they live and to allow them to understand that their name can at any time appear on the list of political prisoners. We want the people around the world to know that in such country as Belarus, people are kept in prisons for political reasons.

Unfortunately, the list of people who are victimized by the regime continues to grow. This situation strongly influences the present as well as the future of Belarus. Belarusians are forced to find themselves in the opposition to the regime or decide to leave the country to avoid persecution. The lack of perspectives leads to the increased in the number of such negative phenomena as crime, alcoholism, suicide rates, and various demographic problems.

We cannot calmly look at the suffering of political prisoners and their families. We cannot come to terms with the fact that the regime which lasts now for 17 years deprives Belarusians of the decent future. We cannot accept the fact that Belarusians are losing their hope and feel helpless when nothing changes for the better, when “tomorrow never comes.”

The idea of ​​creating the palitviazni.info website was born in Novopolotsk and Mogilev branch of the Human Rights Center “Viasna”. Then the project was joined by lawyers and journalists both from Minsk, as well as from other cities. We all want to honor the memory of political prisoners – to create a kind of a tome about the repression in Belarus. First of all, the heroes of our website will be the people against whom criminal proceedings were politically motivated. May they and their families know that when they suffer for the future of all of us, we will do everything for their courage, dedication, and true heroism to not be forgotten.

We also remind about the other side of repression and politically motivated cases. In addition to the heroes there are also anti-heroes, those who carry out arrests, tortures, accuse and condemn innocent people, those who create the reality intolerable for honest people. We also want to emphasize that people who intentionally or unintentionally take the way of violence have a chance to stop, repent and turn from this shameful way. We know people who have found the strength, dignity and conscience to do so.

We all understand that the events of today will be history tomorrow. But the history should not be forgotten or distorted. Let our past, and what we are experiencing now, will eventually become a lesson for future generations, let them learn from our mistakes, so that they can restore dignity and justice to Belarus!

I’m sure that there will come the time when God will render to each what he/she deserves. We have to believe that the future is not so far away, and with God’s help, we can bring it by ourselves!

 

Yours sincerely,

on behalf of my friends and colleagues –

Tatiana Snitko

 

The editors of the website can be contacted by sending an email to or

Currently the website is run together with the Polish organization Foundation for the Development of Democratic Initiatives.

The project is co-financed by the Polish development cooperation programme 2012 of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland. Programme Support for Democracy.