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On June 22, in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius, a group of recently released Belarusian political prisoners appeared in public for the first time. The press conference included blogger and political activist Sergei Tikhanovsky, journalist Ihar Karney, language teacher Natallia Dulina, and 24-year-old activist Kirill Balahonau. Their accounts revealed the extent of repression in Belarusian prisons, detailing years in solitary confinement, forced propaganda viewings, and psychological pressure.

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Blogger and presidential candidate Sergei Tikhanovsky, who was arrested in 2020 while attempting to run against Lukashenka [...] was later sentenced to 18 years in prison. Speaking in Vilnius, he described being held under a regime of total isolation and psychological pressure.

“For two and a half years, I wasn’t allowed a single letter. No phone calls to family. For five years, I wasn’t allowed to confess to a priest,” he said. “I couldn’t even buy a toothbrush or soap, for years. They’d give us something from time to time, of course. But even a pen refill was impossible to get, seven kopecks [or 2 cents] each, and even those had to be passed along by other prisoners.”

“Cleaning: four times a day. If you’re not scrubbing constantly, back to SHIZO, a punishment isolation unit. They’d come in, run a hand along the wall: ‘White? Not clean. SHIZO.’ It’s a nightmare. What do you call that, if not torture?” he said.

“Justice in Belarus isn’t dead,” he went on. “It just has a hole in its forehead.”

Asked by journalists how his children had reacted to seeing him, Tikhanovsky grew emotional and cried: his daughter didn’t recognise him.

Other prisoners faced similar pressure [...]