On 25 June 2022, the KGB added two more people to its “list of terrorists”: Minsk residents Denis Salmanovich and Andrey Slizyuk.
Denis Salmanovich was detained on 4 October 2021. Pro-government channels call Denis the «chief visual editor» of the videos of the «Supraciu» (Resistance) movement. In a video, Salmanovich says he was detained by police officers because he had «been a member of destructive Telegram channels», «cooperated with "Busly Liaciac"» and taken part in protests in 2020.
Andrey Slizyuk managed to leave the country and is now in a safe place. The young man agreed to talk to dissidentby about this latest decision by the illegitimate authorities. Andrey is one of the defendants in the case of the “Busly Liaciac” (“Storks Are Flying”) group. Aliaksei Hameza, Andrey Budai, Aliaksei Ivanisau, Alexander Muraviev, Nikolai Biblis and Alexander Sidorenko, who were detained in this case, are accused of a series of acts of resistance, including damaging the car of a Barysau district judge in March 2021 and a window of a flat where «a Minsk prosecutor's office employee lives with a young child» in April 2021,
Andrey Slizyuk has held an active civic position since 2010:
I realised that something was wrong in our country. I went to the clapping protests in 2011. Back then most of the population didn't care, so afterwards I wasn't active. In 2020, when many people "woke up", I was inspired and realised I wasn't alone. In 2020 I was at the polling station and saw with my own eyes how many "accordion-folded" ballots there were in the ballot box.
Andrey met Aliaksei Ivanisau at neighbourhood courtyard meetings. It turned out that they lived in neighbouring buildings and had not known about each other before. Over time, Andrey and Aliaksei became friends. When the arrests began, Andrey urgently left the country. He says it was a premonition – and it did not let him down. All the defendants in the case are in custody and have been added to the “list of terrorists”, and the court hearings are being held behind closed doors.
Andrey Slizyuk, photo from his personal archive
I believe they are making us out to be "terrorists" so that others will be discouraged from opposing the authorities. In reality, neither I nor the guys are terrorists – we are ordinary, conscientious citizens, patriots, I would even say. With this interview I want to express words of support to everyone who has been unlawfully convicted. I want them to know that they are remembered and that they will not serve out their enormous sentences, says Andrey.
Anyone who is subjected to the harshest persecution by the Lukashenka regime, including being branded a “terrorist”, deserves as much support as possible from civil society and the international community. Clearly, the criminal and punitive justice system of today's Belarus is utterly incapable of presenting all the facts of what is happening and the circumstances of a person's persecution objectively, independently, openly and impartially. The main goal of all the institutions involved in criminal prosecution (from police officers to judges) is to carry out the dictator's will, namely to suppress dissent and to put the utmost pressure on all supporters of democratic change. In such circumstances, it is unacceptable to take the “evidence” of the defendants' guilt at face value or to accept the labels pinned on a person or group of people in order to discredit the opposition or intimidate the population. Only in a democratic country with a fully independent and open judicial system, free access to legal aid and respect for the presumption of innocence will we be able to objectively assess any given case of political persecution. Until then, our task is to fight for the immediate release of all prisoners of the Lukashenka regime and, in the course of that struggle, to help them as fully as possible to bear all the hardships and privations of imprisonment.
Photo from the interviewee's personal archive