A Catholic political prisoner has urged the Pope to help ease the “despair” felt by citizens of Belarus, by taking a stand “for good, truth and justice” after a year of virtual silence towards repression in the former Soviet republic.
“I am not asking you to advocate for me – I am asking you to call on these terrible people who do not care about the lives of others and of hundreds of grief-stricken families to stop”, said Ihar Losik, a blogger and former journalist with Radio Liberty. “I really want to believe God has not abandoned us, that this senseless cruelty will stop, that no one else will die.”
The letter was published as two more protest leaders, Maria Kolesnikova and Maxim Znak, were given heavy jail terms on Monday for challenging President Alexander Lukashenko's discredited August 2020 re-election after 26 years in power.
Losik said he believed Pope Francis had been kept “aware of everything” in Belarus, but added that he had not been allowed to see his infant daughter for more than a year, while other prisoners had died while incarcerated.
“Why has this been going on for over a year? I do not have the answer, nor do I know why more than 600 others are currently suffering in the same way, with thousands more in real danger”, said Losik, who was jailed in 2020 on incitement and public order charges.
“I just want to tell you that many people who've found themselves in the same situation are now so desperate that they see the only resolution to their suffering from never-ending mental and physical pressure and torture in suicide... I am asking you to stand up for good, truth and justice, for thousands of Belarusians who have despaired.”
Belarus’s Catholic Church has been widely criticised for saying nothing against regime repression since the return from enforced exile and subsequent resignation last January of its leader, Archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz, moves negotiated by the Vatican's newly installed Minsk nuncio, Archbishop Ante Josic.
The secretary of Belarus’s ecumenical Christian Vision organisation, Natallia Vasilevich, told The Tablet on Monday that Losik had survived a 42-day hunger-strike with his wife earlier this year, but said the Pope had not replied to previous requests for help, including a December 2020 appeal from Sviatlana Tsikhanovskaya, the country’s exiled opposition leader.
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