‘I can confirm torture reports in Belarusian prisons because it also happened to me’

In 1999, Pavel Kirylionak took to the streets in Minsk, Belarus, to protest against plans to further integrate the country with Russia by president Alexander G. Lukashenko.

A former director of a collective farm, Lukashenko had shocked the nation five years earlier with a surprise victory against the heirs of the communist apparatus, thus becoming the country’s first leader since the independence from the USSR in 1991. 

Police cracked down on those who, like Kirylionak, did not agree with Lukashenko—a cycle that repeated with his subsequent victories in presidential elections.

Two decades have passed, Lukashenko is still in power, but is facing the biggest uprising in the country’s living memory. Kirylionak, exiled in Barcelona, watches from afar.