Mikalai Dziadok, Novy Chas columnist marks 1420 days behind bars

Mikalai Dzi­adok, a Novy Chas colum­nist, blog­ger, and anar­chist, has been behind bars since Novem­ber 2020.

Mikalai Dzi­adok. Cour­tesy pho­to

On Novem­ber 12, 2020, Mikalai Dzi­adok was arrest­ed dur­ing a police raid. Mikalai was bru­tal­ly tor­tured dur­ing his deten­tion and at the police depart­ment.

On Novem­ber 10, 2021, the anar­chist was sen­tenced to 5 years in prison.

Ini­tial­ly, the polit­i­cal pris­on­er served his sen­tence in the Hor­ki cor­rec­tion­al facil­i­ty. Over time, he was trans­ferred to a high-secu­ri­ty prison in Hrod­na.

His sched­uled release date was April 25, 2025. How­ev­er, it appears that Mikalai will not be released upon com­plet­ing his term, as a new crim­i­nal case has been opened against him. He is accused of “per­sis­tent dis­obe­di­ence to prison admin­is­tra­tion” and faces up to three more years in prison.

“I recent­ly cal­cu­lat­ed that I have spent a total of 6.5 years in prison, which rep­re­sents one-fifth of my life­time.

It is a com­mon mis­con­cep­tion that the years spent in prison are ‘lost years’ or ‘wast­ed time.’ I want to clar­i­fy that I do not view those years as lost. From the out­set, I made a con­scious deci­sion to ensure that I would not spend a sin­gle day in prison with­out a pur­pose. This does not nec­es­sar­i­ly entail study­ing or exer­cis­ing but also reflec­tion, med­i­ta­tion, and day­dream­ing. These activ­i­ties can be ben­e­fi­cial if approached with a con­scious mind­set.

My life may not always be com­fort­able, but it is always mean­ing­ful,” Mikalai Dzi­adok wrote in a let­ter from behind bars in July 2022.

Mikalai Dzi­adok was rec­og­nized as a polit­i­cal pris­on­er by human rights activists.