Former political prisoner evacuated from Belarus, mother arrested on criminal charges
Volha Takarčuk and her mother.
February 10, Pozirk. Blogger and designer Volha Takarčuk has been evacuated from Belarus, BYSOL Foundation co-founder Andrej Stryžak said on Facebook yesterday.
“The former political prisoner had to contact the foundation’s evacuation service because of the recent crackdown,” Stryžak said.
“Unfortunately, Volha’s mother, 63-year-old Iryna Takarčuk, remained a prisoner of the Lukashists.”
The Viasna Human Rights Center reported Iryna Takarčuk’s arrest on February 9.
According to human rights defenders, she is accused of facilitating extremism.
The woman was arrested during a security crackdown on January 23.
Volha Takarčuk was arrested on the same day.
It was reported that she was taken to the Committee for State Security after a raid, interrogated about receiving aid through the Edostavka delivery service, and asked to write a confession.
“What is my guilt? That my subscriber bought me sausage?” the blogger said, as quoted by Viasna.
“Write a sincere confession that you repent and will no longer accept sausage from the subscriber.”
On January 24, an investigator called the father of the former political prisoner and asked him to be a witness in his wife’s case, human rights defenders said.
The investigator asked Volha Takarčuk to do the same.
She then fled Belarus with her father and children.
“I have one sister left in Belarus, who has a disabled grandmother (my father’s mother), and my mother in a prison in Žodzina,” the former political prisoner said.
In May 2021, law enforcers searched the apartment where Takarčuk lived with her husband and minor children.
She was suspected of insulting a judge and defamation, and later faced a public order offense charge.
In December 2021, a district court in Minsk sentenced Takarčuk to a year and a half behind bars.
On June 16, 2022, she was released from Homiel’s Penal Colony No. 4 after serving her sentence in full.
Number of evacuation requests from Belarus spikes – foundation
February 9, Pozirk. BYSOL Foundation co-founder Andrej Stryžak has said the EU-based foundation received an increased number of evacuation requests from Belarus during the recent crackdown there. “In the timeframe we are talking about, the number of people who wanted …