Ales Bialiatski: "I am very grateful to the people who write me!"
Ales Bialiatski. Photo by Yulia Darashkevich.
In
his letters of the New Year period Ales Bialiatski says that he "has
been totally covered with the avalanche of letters and postcards when
congratulations were added to the action of support". Sometimes
he received about 500 letters a day from Belarus and abroad.
"I
am very grateful to the people who write to me!" answers Ales to
the authors of the letters which cheered him up on these winter days
in the conditions which can be hardly called festive.
"We
are still working – tearing sheet wadin, fill mattress covers with
it – an order for soldiers. The nose is full of dust after such
work, and one has to breeze with his mouth," wrote Ales on one
of the last December Saturdays, which was a working day, and added
that he was glad that the post worked on this day as well.
"On
the New Year holidays we had two days off. And on these days and the
first half of 2 January I kept reading hundreds of letters and
postcards... I can sincerely say that I haven't missed any of them. I
felt the waves of support and sympathy, the fluids of spiritual
energy which emanated from them, with all my senses. It was an
inexpressible New year...
I start seriously thinking: how I
can thank to the people who support me so sincerely and
cordially...".
Bear in mind that it is already the second
time the head of the Human Rights Center "Viasna" and the
vice-president of the International Federation for Human Rights Als
Bialiatski has to meet the New Year holidays behind bars. Deprived of
liberty for his human rights activities, in winter 2011-2012 Ales
Bialiatski was kept in the Zhodzina prison, where he suffered a
personal tragedy – on 24 December his badly ill father passed away,
and he was not allowed to bid farewell to him before death.
