"You're just watching the life you built crumble," former political prisoner speaks of three years of imprisonment
Veterinarian Yana Zhurauliova was detained at work after she operated on a cat in November 2021 for participating in Sunday Marches. She was sentenced to three years of imprisonment and sent to Homieĺ women's penal colony No. 4. Most of all, the woman worries about the time lost in prison, which she could devote to professional development and helping animals. Yana calls the repressive experience she had to go through a "soulless machine," and the penal colony — an episode of Black Mirror and Alice Through the Looking Glass. After serving her full sentence at the end of the summer of 2024, she was released and left Belarus a few days later, because she immediately realized that "in the current situation, Belarus no longer has anything good in store" for her. Former political prisoner Yana Zhurauliova spoke with Viasna about the adaptation after her release, the difficulty of returning to her profession, three years of imprisonment, and a women's penal colony.
"The hardest thing right now is to admit that you're not as cool as you used to be."
- "Yellow tag" of Yana
Before Yana's detention, she worked at the veterinary clinic of the Republican Center for the Olympic Equestrian Training and Horse Breeding in Ratamka, where she was detained on November 23, 2021. The woman loves her job very much, so when asked about resuming it after her release, she immediately begins to talk about her favorite activity:
- An image Yana drew behind bars
"Initially, I was motivated to return to the profession as soon as possible — this is important to me. I was good at what I did, and now, of course, I feel the consequences of these three years [of imprisonment]. It was a difficult period. The hardest thing right now is to admit that you're not as cool as you used to be. There are psychological issues — self-doubt, because I haven't been doing my job for a long time. It's hard enough to realize that you've lost something, that you could have become an even better specialist during that time, and now you need to make up for what you've missed."
The former political prisoner was released at the end of August 2024 and left Belarus a few days later. Yana remembers returning to freedom as a difficult stage:
"As soon as I was free, I had more energy, and then, probably, the body relaxed. When I left Belarus, rented an apartment, and calmed down a little, I just slept for 12–15 hours a day. I didn't have the energy to take part in internships. I didn't want to do anything — I just slept and cried every now and then. This has never happened before: I see some cute video with cats, and that's it, I cry. This period was before the New Year, I hope it has already passed. But I guess I needed it... I'm, after all, a living person."
"The better you are in the penal colony, the worse you are"
- Yana after release
The former political prisoner calls the Homieĺ penal colony an episode of Black Mirror, where the control is total, the things happening are absurd, and the reality where the prisoners find themselves is distorted. The penal colony has strict, sometimes illogical rules. Life there is subject to a strict schedule, and any manifestation of individuality or disagreement is suppressed.
"The 'yellow category' is immediately informed that they will be harassed for anything. And, of course, we didn't do anything that wasn't allowed, because we didn't want any problems for ourselves or for others. That is, if we are placed in conditions where we suffer a little more, then we are ready to bear it, as long as everyone else does not suffer from us. There was a collective responsibility in my squad. For example, when you sit drinking tea with 'extremist' girls, you need to sit so that no one even thinks that we can exchange, let's say, a chocolate. There is always a feeling of being watched from behind you back in the penal colony — everyone is and agent, everyone is an informant. And when the cameras were installed in our squad, on the one hand, it was a relief because other prisoners could not falsely inform on you. They could be used for your own safety. I sat down in front of the cameras on purpose so that I could be clearly seen. In general, the best compliment in prison is when people don't pay attention to you. This is an upside-down world, this is an episode of Black Mirror, this is Alice Through the Looking Glass, who does not understand where she has fallen. The better you are in the penal colony, the worse you are. The more you could do outside, the less you can do here. While your individuality and your differences are valued outside, here the opposite is true. There you need to keep your head down. It is necessary to become so featureless that there is nothing to pick on you for. This is the reality of the prison I was in."
