Online letters to political prisoners project winds down

September 5, BPN. Pis’ma v kletochku, a volunteer online service enabling people to send letters to people imprisoned on politically-motivated charges without visiting the post office, has announced that it terminates its activities.

“For more than six months now, we have received no replies [from prisoners],” the project team said in its Telegram channel. “This is very upsetting and casts doubt on the meaning and usefulness of our work . . . We do not want to just sponsor Biełpošta [Belarusian postal service] and throw thousands of envelopes and letters in the trash, or waste people’s money and volunteers’ time.”

The volunteers also noted that the number of people considered as political prisoners has risen more than 6-fold since the launch of the initiative, while the number of volunteers has been steadily declining.

In about a year and a half, Pis’ma v kletochku volunteers have received and sent about 18,000 letters to political prisoners.

Other initiatives that allow people to write letters online are письмо.бел and Solidarity Postcards Atelier. Political prisoners’ data and their current addresses are published by human rights defenders from the Viasna Human Rights Center, Dissidentby and others.