BIALYSTOK
\nHaving missed almost four years of her son\u2019s life while incarcerated in a Belarusian prison, Irina Schastnaya still wants to zip up the 14-year-old\u2019s coat, struggling to digest how tall he grew in her absence.
\nGerman was 10 when security services broke into their home in Minsk, raiding the flat and arresting his mother in front of him for challenging authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko\u2019s rule. \u201cI managed to say to him: \u2018German don\u2019t worry, everything will be fine,\u201d she told media, recalling the November 2020 morning that \u201cchanged our lives forever.\u201d
\nHer arrest was just one of a huge crackdown on dissent orchestrated by Lukashenko after tens of thousands protested his 2020 election victory, claiming widespread fraud. In power since 1994, the Moscow ally is set to secure another term in power this weekend in an election with no real competition. The Viasna rights group says Belarus currently has 1,256 political prisoners, and all opposition leaders are either in jail or in exile.
\nWithin days of Schastnaya\u2019s 2020 arrest, German\u2019s father fled the country with the boy \u2014 settling in Kyiv, before leaving for Poland when it became clear Russia may invade Ukraine. Schastnaya was sentenced to four years for editing a Telegram channel critical of the government. Sent to Penal Colony Number Four in the city of Gomel, she was made to sew military and construction uniforms at the prison factory.
\nBut she spent most of the time \u201cthinking of German.\u201d They were allowed one video call a month \u2014 under the close watch of a prison officer. \u201cHe did not like those calls,\u201d she said. \u201cHe could literally see the person listening in the frame.\u201d They were reunited in September 2024, when Schastnaya was released and fled Belarus to join her family in Poland\u2019s Bialystok \u2014 close to Belarus and long a hub for exiles.
\n\u201cWhen I opened the door, I saw this tall guy,\u201d she told media, still visibly shaken.\u201dIt\u2019s like heaven and earth. It\u2019s not the same mothering… He was 10 when I was arrested, he still held my hand when we walked in the street.\u201d Like other ex-prisoners media spoke to, Schastnaya now has one wish: to get those who remain behind bars out \u2014 by all \u201cpossible and impossible\u201d means. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BIALYSTOK Having missed almost four years of her son\u2019s life while incarcerated in a Belarusian prison, Irina Schastnaya still wants to zip up the 14-year-old\u2019s coat, struggling to digest how tall he grew in her absence. German was 10 when security services broke into their home in Minsk, raiding the flat and arresting his mother […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-457429","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n