FILE PHOTO: Tatsiana Khomich, sister of imprisoned Belarus opposition leader Maria Kalesnikava, looks on during an interview in Vilnius, Lithuania August 2, 2024. REUTERS/Janis Laizans/File Photo
LONDON (Reuters) - When Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko used the full force of his security apparatus to smash mass demonstrations in 2020, Maria Kalesnikava became a symbol of the protesters' defiance.
Snatched off the street by masked officers, the opposition campaigner was bundled into a van, driven to the border with Ukraine and threatened with expulsion "alive or in bits".
She tore her passport into small pieces to thwart the attempt to deport her. Later, at her trial, she smiled and danced in a courtroom cage. She was sentenced to 11 years on charges including conspiracy to seize power.
Four years on from her arrest, Kalesnikava, 42, is being held incommunicado in a tiny, stinking prison cell where the toilet is a hole in the floor, her sister Tatsiana Khomich says, based on information she has gleaned from sources including former inmates.
Her weight has dropped to just 45 kg (99 pounds), although she is 175 cm (5 feet 9 inches) tall, as a perforated stomach ulcer means she cannot tolerate most prison food, Khomich said.
She was last allowed to write to her family in February last year. Letters she has been sent from the outside world have been torn up in front of her by prison staff, Khomich has been told.
"I believe this is a critical moment because no one can survive for a long time in such conditions," she told Reuters in an interview from outside Belarus.
"They torture her, basically. It's psychological but also physical torture as well."
The Belarus interior ministry did not respond to a request for comment on Kalesnikava's prison conditions.
Since early July, Lukashenko has released 78 people convicted for protest activity out of around 1,400 designated by human rights groups as political prisoners. Activists say more pardons may coincide with a National Unity holiday on Sept. 17.
But Lukashenko's critics say they see no genuine policy change. All the leading pro-democracy figures are still behind bars, including Kalesnikava, Nobel Peace Prize winner Ales Bialiatski and Syarhey Tsikhanouski, husband of exiled opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya.
"We don't have much time to save Maria's life," Khomich said in a video appeal.
Lukashenko this week denied that there are political prisoners in Belarus. He said the people released so far had been pardoned for different reasons, including some who were sick or crazy.
"Why keep them there (in prison), feed them at public expense? We let them go. They are under the full control of law enforcement agencies here," he said. His office did not respond to a request for further comment.
TURNING POINT
For Lukashenko the mass demonstrations of 2020, triggered by an election that the opposition and the West accused him of stealing, marked a watershed in three decades of authoritarian rule.
For years, he had enjoyed the benefits of being in a "union state" with Russia - notably cheap energy - while doing just enough to make the West believe he might be capable of reform.
With the crushing of the protests, he burned his bridges with the United States and the European Union and became beholden to President Vladimir Putin, who propped him up with loans and a promise of extra police support if he needed it.
Lukashenko let Russia launch a key prong of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine from Belarus, and then base tactical nuclear missiles there. He helped Putin defuse a mutiny by the Wagner mercenary group in 2023, and played a part in a major East-West prisoner swap last month.
Some observers think he is uneasy about the extent of his dependence on Moscow and hopes to repair some ties with the EU with the dissident releases.
Pavel Slunkin, a former Belarusian diplomat now living abroad, said Lukashenko may be hoping EU states will return their ambassadors who - apart from Hungary's - were withdrawn in 2020 to show they no longer recognised him as leader.
"I think he is just trying to restart again the game with the European Union," Slunkin said.
Nigel Gould-Davies, a former British ambassador to Belarus, said the prisoner releases were a return to a tactic that Lukashenko had used to earn favours from the EU in the past.
An EU diplomat said Lukashenko could not be trusted until all political prisoners were freed. A U.S. State Department spokesperson also called for their release; it welcomed the moves so far but condemned what it called a sustained crackdown.
Alena Masliukova, a representative of human rights group Viasna, said Lukashenko was still jailing critics, in some cases for comments they posted online years ago.
"He wants to remain in power and he's manoeuvring between Putin, who is pushing him into war, and the West, to get the sanctions removed."
Maria Kalesnikava's sister Khomich said she did not see any end to repression but that the West should encourage Lukashenko to keep releasing prisoners.
Asked if Kalesnikava would be willing to request a pardon from Lukashenko, as prisoners freed so far have had to do, she replied that she was not sure: "But I hope that if she will be provided with such an opportunity, she will use it."
(Additional reporting by Andrius Sytas in Vilnius, Andrew Gray in Brussels and Daphne Psaledakis in Washington; editing by Philippa Fletcher)
