"There Is A Huge Demand For Change In Belarus"

• 2.10.2025, 13:08

A former political prisoner told how the law enforcers reacted to the popular protest.

Blogger Dmitry Kozlov ("Gray Cat"), released from Lukashenko's prison on September 11, 2025, in interview with the website Charter97.org spoke about the events of the 2020 protest:

- I only partially caught the 2020 processes at large - it was the signature collection actions that took place on Komarovka. I already saw then that the effect was overwhelming, we knew that there was a huge demand for change in Belarus, that people would come out. We understood it, we felt people well, the mass of people. From 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. there was a queue, a crowd, 16 signature collectors for Svetlana Tikhanovska at Komarovska market, and they were constantly working. Some people stood in line for 3-3.5 hours.

But then they put me in jail. I did not catch the main events - when candidates were already registered, when rallies were held after the presidential campaign. I only heard about it. But the news traveled pretty well back then. In the pre-trial detention center on Volodarskogo I heard what was going on, read about it, was worried, of course. On August 9-10, I even heard the noise of clashes not far away, and in the following days I also heard what was happening remotely. It was even visually felt - by the law enforcers, how they were running around worried, afraid that the detention center could be stormed.

Afterwards I followed the development of events, expected what would happen to the country, what would happen to us, how the case would develop further. Because we were in a suspended state. The investigation was underway, but we knew that we had committed nothing, no crime. This, by the way, gave me strength: I knew that I was in jail solely for my political beliefs. So I had no guilt.

I was energized by people's support: even though the censorship was working, and they did not give me one third of the letters, I still received a lot of them. Once in one day I received 42 letters on Volodarka. This, of course, was incredibly supportive. For example, a letter comes, and it says, "From so-and-so street." And the letter has 30 letters from different people.