Released but not free: Five Belarusian human rights defenders reflect on life after prison

The five human rights defenders represent some of Belarus’s best-known voices for human rights. For years, their imprisonment was emblematic of the Belarusian authorities’ sweeping crackdown on independent civil society and the human rights movement following the 2020 elections. While they have been released from prison, freedom remains complicated. Forced into exile and still facing repression abroad, they remain survivors of injustice that began with their wrongful imprisonment, and will persist until there is accountability.

Adjusting to life beyond the prison walls

Ales Bialiatski remembers the crossing into Lithuania on December 13th 2025 as not only a crossing between countries but also “a border between captivity and freedom”.

“Reality felt like a dream. It was only the next morning, when I stepped outside the hotel, that I truly felt free. Fresh snow had fallen; Vilnius was quiet, white and clean.”

“Prison lets go of a person slowly, without rushing. Some prison habits remain. You learn to live again in an ordinary environment. The process of adapting to freedom is still continuing for me today.”

Read the full interview with Ales Bialiatski in English and Belarusian.

Freedom is a feeling that Marfa Rabkova finds complex after captivity, and she cannot separate her own freedom from that of those who remain imprisoned.

“For me, freedom is still the sum of all freedoms. And as long as people remain imprisoned, as long as repression continues in Belarus, I cannot feel free.”

Rabkova also highlights the continuing fear of transnational repression.

“You understand that the price of any word or action can be very high, because families, loved ones, relatives and friends remain in Belarus. And this matters enormously, because it is another reason you do not feel free.”

Read the full interview with Marfa Rabkova in English and Belarusian.

For Uladzimir Labkovich, the first few months after his release were dominated by a fear that he would be taken back.

“I couldn’t sleep at night. I had this irrational fear that as soon as I fell asleep, as soon as I lost control of what was happening, the KGB would kidnap me ... Every night I fought against sleep, trying not to let myself fall asleep.”

He contrasts this with the relief that sleep used to offer during his time in prison: “Dreams are the best thing behind bars, because there, in my dreams, I was free, I saw my family.”

Months later, Labkovich still does not consider himself entirely free, and routines and thought patterns from prison linger.

“I often get this feeling that I am late, that everything around me is foreign. The first three months were the hardest. It has already been seven months since my release, but I still don’t feel free.”

Read the full interview with Uladzimir Labkovich in English and Belarusian.

Valiantsin Stefanovic says that he has experienced several different psychological states following his release, from euphoria to depression, and these states have affected his complex sense of freedom.

“Now I feel free. Free in exile … The most important thing is that I am alive. I can see the sky and the sun again, I can hug my children and the woman I love. This is life, and I am alive, I am simply living. Perhaps this is what freedom is.”

Read the full interview with Valiantsin Stefanovic in English and Belarusian.

For Nasta Loika, freedom began before she had physically left prison. Two days before her release, a prison official asked whether she would stay in contact with the authorities and report on conversations with other former prisoners. She refused.

“Nobody told me what was going to happen next, but for some reason I already felt this new boldness inside me, and a sense that I had some control over the situation.”

Now for Loika, the feeling of freedom is linked to the simple things that were severely restricted during her time in prison: “meetings, phone calls and video messages, a phone in my hands, a keyboard under my fingers, a park in Warsaw, walking through a field outside the city with my friend’s dog.”

Read the full interview with Nasta Loika in English and Belarusian.

Living in the “shadow of exile”

None of the five chose exile freely. They were taken directly from detention and removed from Belarus.

“Nobody asked for my consent,” Stefanovic says. “I was expelled from the country against my will. I was given no choice.”

“When they were taking me out of the detention centre in Minsk, I looked out of the window and said goodbye to my homeland in my thoughts, probably forever. Maybe I will be lucky enough to be buried there.”

Loika describes being carried along by decisions made by others.

“They simply took me and threw me across the border, without a passport and without any stories about human rights. Nobody asked what I wanted, nobody offered me anything or set any conditions. So I just floated along on the wave of other people’s decisions. Towards joy, safety and warm reunions.”

For Rabkova, being forced from Belarus was profoundly painful.

“It was very difficult for me to leave Belarus. I would even say that for me it was a harder blow than accepting a 15-year prison sentence.” She refuses to accept exile as permanent. “I have not lost hope of returning. I know that I will return. I simply cannot accept the fact that I am not at home now, that I will have to live outside my own country.”

Labkovich was expelled with a hat pulled over his eyes and taped in place. He says that not having to decide whether to leave spared him an impossible choice.

“It was easier for me because I did not have to face that terrible choice, although I understood that ‘...at the end of this path stands, grimly, the inevitable shadow of exile.’”

Despite their different experiences, returning to Belarus remains a hope shared by the five. Bialiatski describes the country under authoritarian rule as “one enormous prison, an occupied zone”, but remains certain that exile will end.

“I strongly believe that I will return, just as everyone who was forced to leave and wants to return will come back too.”

Resuming the defence of human rights

The five human rights defenders have resumed the work for which they were persecuted. Loika views her imprisonment as a way to gather first-hand research.

“During my long years in prison, I kept telling myself two things. First, this is all a temporary ordeal, just a pause. And second, this is simply ‘embedded monitoring’, so that I can study everything more deeply and then do more on human rights in Belarus afterwards.”

She now feels responsible for using what she witnessed.

“I really want to change systemic things in Belarus, so intense human rights work is the only obvious path for me ... Because this is what I lived for. This is what I did for almost half my life.”

Rabkova similarly describes human rights work not simply as a profession, but as part of her identity.

“I continue to fight for human rights because it is already part of me, part of who I am. Wherever I am, whatever the circumstances, it just switches on naturally inside me. For me, this is a kind of chain of reciprocity: I help because I know there are people in the world who will also reach out a hand to me when things are hard.”

“You do not stop being a human rights defender, wherever you are.”

For Stefanovic, almost 30 years of experience now carries a responsibility to those continuing the movement.

“I believe that my many years of experience in human rights work can still be useful to a new generation of Belarusian human rights defenders. I am proud that I directly contributed to the development of the Belarusian human rights community and movement, and that I was, and still am, an inseparable part of it.”

That new generation also gives Labkovich hope. While imprisoned, he feared that the Belarusian human rights movement had almost ceased to exist. After his release, he encountered a different reality: “Young people have come into human rights work. It is a completely new generation, with new ideas and new approaches, but also with the same commitment to the mission of a human rights defender.”

Bialiatski sees the struggle in Belarus as part of a wider global defence of human rights.

“Justice, international justice, and international human rights agreements are now being restricted and attacked from different directions all over the world. There has been a global shift towards authoritarianism. We need to continue our work.”

Solidarity as survival

The five repeatedly return to the importance of solidarity: from family and colleagues, from strangers and from those continuing human rights work inside and outside Belarus.

“What gives me hope for the future are moments of humanity, empathy, interaction and mutual understanding,” Rabkova says. “And what impresses me most is seeing these qualities in people from whom I did not even expect them.”

For Stefanovic, messages from strangers provided warmth during imprisonment.

“Sometimes the simplest heartfelt words have enormous power and warm you like a fire in bitter cold. I am always amazed by the solidarity of complete strangers who found a minute in their everyday lives to remember and support those who are having a hard time, those who are in prison now.”

Stefanovic’s appeal is simple, and echoes the call of many former political prisoners: “Please, do not stop. Your support is still needed by so many people in our unjust world.”

Loika underlines the importance of that support.

“That is why support from people in other countries is so important to them: donations, support for solidarity campaigns, appeals to your own governments demanding a response to what is happening in Belarus. Only then do we feel that we have something to lean on.”

Hundreds of political prisoners remain behind bars in Belarus, alongside imprisoned human rights defenders in other countries. Those who have been released are therefore conscious that their own stories are not finished, and that others are still waiting.

Labkovich’s thoughts are with, among others, Viasna volunteers Vital Chopik, Sviatlana Yakubovich, Stanislau Machalau, and Uladzimir Tseliapun, a human rights defender from Mazyr. He also talks of political prisoners in Russia, and of Azerbaijani human rights defender Anar Mammadli, who has been detained since April 2024 and was sentenced to 13 years in prison on 7 September.

Bialiatski addresses them directly: “Every minute, every second, we are thinking about you. Believe that things will get better. You are not alone!”

Rabkova concludes her thoughts on solidarity with a phrase adopted as a motto by the women in her prison cell: “In the end, everything will be all right. And if it is not all right yet, then it is not the end.”

This article was written based on interviews produced by The Barys Zvozskau Belarusian Human Rights House and Viasna Human Rights Centre in cooperation with Human Rights House Foundation.