How to support political prisoners in Belarus

It is more and more difficult to support political prisoners in Belarus. This is because the authorities are trying to break people’s solidarity in any way they can.

Nevertheless, there are still ways in which you can support these people directly and indirectly from abroad. In the following, we present platforms and initiatives and provide tips.

Congratulate prisoners on their birthdays or send political prisoners a letter or postcard, not just on special occasions.

What you should keep in mind:

• Copy the spelling of the address exactly as it is shown above. The human rights organisation ‘Viasna’ also publishes the current addresses of prisoners on its website.
• You do not have to write down your sender address, only if you want to.
• Letters must be written in Russian or Belarusian – you are welcome to use Google Translate, DeepL or come to our regular letter writing workshops.
• Write about positive news, films, books, pets, your city, trips or everyday life. However, avoid political statements or references. However, you can wish them good health or lots of strength.
• Let your creativity run wild: you don’t always need words! You can also draw something, for example.
• You are also welcome to send blank postcards – this increases the likelihood that they will be given to the political prisoners and that they themselves can congratulate their loved ones on special occasions.
• You are welcome to send us a copy or photos of your letter so that we can hand it over to relatives or the prisoners after their release.

Please note that your letters may not always reach the prisoners, as censorship and arbitrariness by the prison guards are very common. Mail to prisoners is withheld in order to put them under pressure or to punish them. Nevertheless, writing is important; released prisoners confirm to us over and over again that letters show them and the regime that the world has not forgotten about them. In many cases, prisoners are also indirectly informed that someone has sent a letter for them. This knowledge alone is often a mental protection!

These initiatives can help you with writing and sending letters

The Solidarity Postcards Atelier offers a special form that you can use to send a message to a political prisoner. The initiative writes your text by hand on a postcard and then sends it to Belarus by post.

You can send letters and support the families of political prisoners via the Dissidentby.com website. There you can not only indicate which prisoner you have already sent a letter to, but also track the status of your letters. There is also an option to become a “keeper” for a prisoner.

• Parcels can only be sent to prisoners in pretrial detention (СИЗО, SISO) whose sentence is not yet in force. However, after close consultation with the relatives it is still possible to send them a parcel so that the relatives can pass it on later.  We are happy to help you with this.
• There is a list of permitted items that can be sent to prisoners by parcel. There are also regulations on how much the parcel is allowed to weigh and how it must be packed, labelled and sent. Please feel free to contact us regarding this!

LIBERECO has been providing medical assistance to released political prisoners and victims of state violence since 2020. With our psychosocial support programme, we also support politically persecuted people from Belarus, with a special focus on relatives and support networks of political prisoners. We also offer extrajudicial legal counselling for politically persecuted persons in exile.

For example, call on the member of parliament in your constituency to stand up for the freedom of political prisoners:

• Take on a godparenthood for prisoners as part of our #WeStandBYyou campaign;
• To to work on the issue in committees, bodies and especially to raise public awareness;
• And to call on the Belarusian authorities to release all political prisoners.

• Learn about the situation in Belarus by reading the website of the human rights organisation Viasna and then share information about political prisoners on your social networks with the hashtag #WeStandBYyou.
• You can also react to and share our posts on X, Instagram, Bluesky, Threads, LinkedIn or Facebook.
• Through me you can make symbolic friends with political prisoners and fulfil small tasks to draw attention to the fate of political prisoners.