Former political prisoner Anastasia Bulybenka reacted to police sealing of her apartment in Mahiliou

The apart­ment in Mahil­iou is the only remain­ing asset of Anas­ta­sia Buly­ben­ka from her father, who went miss­ing in 2009. Buly­ben­ka has sug­gest­ed that the apart­ment may have been sealed as part of spe­cial pro­ceed­ings.

Anas­ta­sia Buly­ben­ka. Pho­to: Vadzim Zamirouski

The woman is unaware of the exact date and the spe­cif­ic crim­i­nal case in ques­tion.

“The pre­cise rea­son for the seal­ing of my apart­ment is unclear to me. It is pos­si­ble that my work at BAJ was one rea­son, but I am unable to con­firm this. I am grate­ful to BAJ for hir­ing me almost a year ago, as it pro­vid­ed me with the sup­port and secu­ri­ty I need­ed at the time. I am proud of my work and I know that I am not alone. We will con­tin­ue to work hard and bring about change,” Anas­ta­sia Buly­ben­ka said in a com­ment to BAJ.

In addi­tion to BAJ, the girl is engaged with the ini­tia­tive Vol­ny­ja Pash­tou­ki, which sup­ports polit­i­cal pris­on­ers through their art­work. She also works with the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Busi­ness Abroad and has pre­sent­ed on Sal­i­dar­nasts social media chan­nels. All of these enti­ties are clas­si­fied as either “extrem­ist mate­ri­als” or “extrem­ist for­ma­tions.”

“After I depart­ed from Belarus, I engaged in inter­views, offline events, and actions, and even ini­ti­at­ed the orga­ni­za­tion of sev­er­al events. I uti­lized all avail­able resources to their fullest extent. It was inevitable that this would even­tu­al­ly occur. Anas­ta­sia Buly­ben­ka added on her Insta­gram.

The activist address­es those who orga­nized her per­se­cu­tion in her home coun­try:

“I want to tell you, the peo­ple respon­si­ble for these actions: you can­not stop me. You can­not silence me or intim­i­date me. Now I will do even more and speak even loud­er, but in no case will I give up.”

For­mer stu­dent Anas­ta­sia Buly­ben­ka was arrest­ed on Novem­ber 12, 2020. She was sen­tenced to 2 years and 6 months of impris­on­ment in the «Stu­dent Case» for «orga­niz­ing and prepar­ing, or active­ly par­tic­i­pat­ing in, actions that seri­ous­ly vio­late pub­lic order».

Anas­ta­sia Buly­ben­ka served her sen­tence in full and was released on Novem­ber 30, 2022. She then left Belarus.