Her Name’s Viktoryja, Meaning Victory

• Iryna Khalip
• 7.04.2023, 19:27

Here are a few words about the Belarusian heroine on the eve of her third sentence.

Viktiryja Kulsha was tried for the third time yesterday. First in Minsk, then in Homel, and now in Rechytsa. And this merry-go-round can go round and round endlessly for her, because Article 411 of the Criminal Code, under which Viktoryja is tried for the second time — “malicious disobedience to the requirements of the administration of a correctional institution that executes a sentence of imprisonment” — can be applied countless times.

Viktoryja is from the first wave of 2020 political prisoners. Those still, one might say, were relatively lucky — everyone was arrested under Article 342 (then it was not even called the people’s article) and given two or three years in jail, or even “liberty restriction at home”. It was only later that incitement of hatred, and facilitating extremist activities, and the creation of an extremist formation became firmly established in everyday life, which made it possible to increase the prison terms and send people to camps for a long time. And the first political prisoners —the autumn draft — got off with relatively short terms.

Viktoryja, who ran the Telegram channel “Drivers 97%” and delivered water to the protesters, was sentenced to two and a half years in prison. Only after the trial, when the woman’s daughter managed to meet her mother in the pre-trial detention center, did the monstrous details become known, which prove that there are no short terms in prison. It is possible not only in two years, but also in a couple of months to turn a person’s life into such a hell, after which they will recover no faster than a man who has served ten years. When Kulsha was still in jail, her father died. Two weeks before her birthday. So, the prison administration did not tell her about it. The terrible news was kept secret until Viktoryja’s birthday, because they wanted to shout into the “feedbox” hole in the morning: “Happy birthday, your father is dead!” I do not know what Viktoryja answered them — I only know that she was immediately sent to the punishment cell.

Then there were several more terms in the punishment cell. For example, in March 2021 - for a DIY white-red-white hairpin she made for Freedom Day. And during the year spent in the Homel colony, Viktoryja spent more than a month in the punishment cell, and five months in the cell-type premises. She, in turn, went on a hunger strike several times — this is perhaps the only form of protest available to a prisoner. And a year after the first verdict, there was a visiting court session already in the Homel colony, where Viktoryja’s sentence was prolonged for a year. And she was already taken to Zarechcha, in the Rechytsa region, to another women's colony, even more terrible than the Homel one.

“Viktoryja is tough,” one former prisoner of the same Rechytsa prison, who managed to get to know Kulsha, told me. However, they communicated very little — Viktoryja was almost immediately sent to the punishment cell. For half a year in this colony, she spent more than three months in the punishment cell, after which she was transferred to the cell-type premises. No letters have come from Viktoryja since March last year. And now — a new trial, and they can add not a year, but two.

Viktoryja Kulsha is one of those who joined the resistance only in 2020. But in these two and a half years, she has traveled a path that not every activist has gone through in a quarter of a century. “Mom finished 11 classes,” said her daughter Aliaksandra, “and then she gave birth to me and studied remotely to become a lawyer. She worked mainly as a labor protection engineer, then moved to the visa center. She had no administrative or criminal record until 2020. And in 2019, she received a letter of thanks from the district administration. In the same 2019, I received the presidential award for 1st place in the republican competition.” Last year, Aliaksandra took a sabbatical, got a job as a waitress, and adopted a kitten so she wouldn't go crazy imagining her mom being tortured in prison. The “presidential award” now sounds like a mockery. And even a letter of thanks from the district administration is like a bad mediocre anecdote.

Palina Sharenda-Panasyuk is being tortured in the same way in the Rechytsa penal colony; she will soon also be tried a second time under the same Article 411. Palina was taken to the punishment cell immediately after arrival. They simply put her and Viktoryja on the same road — hard, slushy, painful, seemingly endless.

It will be endless. Exactly until we win. I think this is a great incentive for us.

Iryna Khalip, exclusively for Charter97.org