Natallia Hersche: We Will Celebrate Our Holiday In The Streets Of Free Belarus

Fight with the lie and the falsification must be systemic.

Brave and uncompromising Natallia Hersche has become one of the symbols of the Belarusian protests of 2020.

Natallia was born in Orsha, 15 years ago she moved from Belarus to live in Switzerland and received citizenship of this European country. However, as soon as the protests began in Belarus, she flew to Minsk.

She was detained on September 19, 2020, after a women's march and sentenced to 2.5 years for tearing off a balaclava from an OMON officer. In the colony, the political prisoner refused to sew the uniform to the security forces. They sent her to a men's prison in Mahiliou because of this. She was unexpectedly released after 17 months behind bars.

In an interview with Charter97.org website, Natallia Hersche spoke about her prison experience, the fight against the regime and the victory of democracy in Belarus.

— Recently a Swiss magazine awarded you with the Courage Prize for her "fearless fight against the state tyranny". Did this award come as a surprise to you?

— Earlier this summer, I was informed of the nomination, but I should not have disclosed it, keeping it a secret.

The award ceremony took place on October 28. There were five nominees. I was 80% sure that it was my story that would be awarded the prize. First of all, this is due to the political situation that has developed recently. It seems to me that my story reveals sharper political themes more clearly.

— Speaking about people in Switzerland, do they know what is going on in Belarus?

— Concerning the war going on in Ukraine the majority of the Europeans are informed. But the developments in Belarus... I'm at a health camp actually and many people don't recognize me. This is due, among other things, to the fact that my appearance has changed since the moment I was released. Then everyone saw how exhausted I was.

But some people remember, they say that they followed the events in Belarus and my story. However, few people know about the situation in Belarus, let's say. I consider it my duty to tell people about what happened in 2020, as well as about what is going on now in an even more brutal version.

— What stories from the Belarusian reality shock Europeans most of all?

— My last speech took place on November 4 at the conference on the safety of carrying out demonstrations in the cities. There were many different people, including people from police departments. They were interested in how the demonstrations took place in 2020 in Belarus, to hear it from a real participant in those events. I told them about it and described my detention. Then a lot of people came up to me, expressed their respect, and expressed words of gratitude for my position.

At the end of my speech, I once again remembered that a lot of political prisoners remain in prisons in Belarus and face the same hardships. I said that, probably, many are still in even more difficult conditions of detention. Repression in Belarus continues, there are many people who suffer undeservedly in the jails of Belarusian prisons.

— There are a lot of women among Belarusian political prisoners. What do they have to face?

— If you switch to the female topic, I don't know. If I recall my imprisonment, then, of course, you are just to forget about your look and any kind of care.

This is simply impossible during imprisonment. The mirror, which is important for every woman, as probably for every person, is installed in the cell in a very uncomfortable place, the darkest one. And in front of it there was also a wide washbasin, because of which you can not approach the mirror. And they did it intently. I keep wondering: what do you need to be guided by in order to come up with different ways to make a person worse so that one does not even have an opportunity to look at his reflection in the mirror? It's shocking, but it's a little thing, of course.

The detention conditions in the punishment cell were completely terrible. I never imagined what it would be like to have such sophisticated methods of punishment in the 21st century. They try to break a person morally with the help of a lack of sleep, to put pressure on him in order to destroy a person morally through physical pain. This, of course, surprised me a lot and set me up even more to fight the prison administration and the regime as a whole.

— You refused to sew uniforms for the security officers while in detention. Why was this such a fundamental issue for you?

— It was essential for me, I mean the kind of work. I did not refuse the work and said that I agree to do any other work, but I will not work with the sewing production, the process of tailoring uniforms for the police, riot police and such kinds of organizations.

I could not imagine sewing for a man who lied to me, who made absolutely falsified accusations against me. The charges were not justified by any material evidence: there were no pictures of the scratch, and they did not cut my nails, although I was accused of having scratched him. That is, there were such obvious outrageous violations.

I couldn't overcome this indignation, for me it was unambiguous: I will not participate in uniform tailoring. I declared it right after appellate court hearings when it left the verdict unchanged. I then added that not only I had refused to sew uniforms, but also I considered myself obliged to fight in all places of my imprisonment wherever I was, with lies and falsifications which would stand in my way. That's what I've been doing for a year and a half. During my sentence in the Homiel colony, I wrote seven complaints, which, of course, were considered superficially. Probably, I didn't expect that they would be considered carefully and thoroughly, the answer was the same on all seven complaints: "no violations are revealed".

— There are many more political prisoners in Belarus now than indicated in the reports of human rights organizations. How could the civilized world influence the Lukashenka regime to liberate them?

— The release of political prisoners is directly related to the fall of the regime. And first of all — not Belorussian, but Russian. Straight interrelation is obvious for everyone. The Putin regime will be destroyed through the victory of the Ukrainian people in this war. The world should support Ukraine by any means and sources. This will help Belarus as well.

— Do you feel optimistic when we are talking about Belarus, and its prospects for freedom and victory?

— It goes without saying, I was feeling like this, and I'm feeling it now, I hope, I will be optimistic about it. In general, I was very much inspired by the large-scale protest of Belarusians who came out in 2020. This showed that many people disagreed with what was happening in Belarus at the moment.

Now I am not losing hope, even though the situation now looks different. Many Belarusians were forced to leave their homeland, but I know that many people dream to return and see a completely different Belarus, new and free. We even planned to meet the girls with whom we were caught at the women's march and celebrate our holiday in the streets of free Belarus.

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