Remember The Dusty Judge

• Irina Khalip
• 3.10.2025, 11:37

The little boy is on the terrorist watch list.

"He has the mental development of a five or six-year-old child. And he got eight articles and seven years in prison, and was put on the terrorist and extremist lists! The only time I wanted to cry in the colony was when I saw him," former political prisoner Andrei Voynich told me. He's the one about Gunya. About Sergei Gunya, serving a seven-year sentence.

Now Sergei Gunya is in Mogilev colony No. 15, where he was transferred from "Vityba" when the renovation began there and some prisoners were moved to other zones. And in "Vityba" Gunya was in the same detachment with Maksim Vinyarsky. When Maxim remembers Sergei, his face stiffens. He says: "For judges like this one, who Gunya for seven years, in hell should be its own SHIZO. So that they don't roast on pans with ordinary sinners, but even worse. Hell in hell."

The colony said that Sergei Gunya had been in a serious accident as a child and had since stopped developing. Or maybe the reason is something else, but the fact remains that Sergei is a child, and a small one at that. Mentally, he is a preschooler. Nowadays, however, even preschoolers master the computer and the Internet. In 2020, Sergei Gunya also commented something on the Internet. He wrote that people should not be beaten. He went out on the streets like everyone else. He was happy about something. I don't know if he understood what a revolution was, but he felt some possible changes for the better. And then he was arrested and tried under eight articles: there's "people's" 342, and mass riots, and insulting Lukashenko, and incitement of hostility or discord. A complete set, in general.

The judge of Homel Evgeny Shershnev - the one who sent the mother of five children Natalya Davydulina to jail for food aid to the families of political prisoners, 75-year-old pensioner Anatoly Kireichik for comments, pharmacy manager Dmitri Makeev for donations, businessman Peter Starotitorov for anti-war posts. And several dozen more political prisoners from sent to the zones. Including Sergei Gunya, who looked at the world through the eyes of a five-year-old boy.

"We crossed paths with him during calls," Andrei Voynich said. - You've probably seen little children running toward an adult they trust - arms outstretched, with absolutely trusting, clear eyes, with a firm conviction that this big strong man will protect and help. Gooney had those same eyes. He would always rush to me and say, "What news? When will they let us all out of here?" I would answer him: "There is no news yet, and that is good news. After all, the main thing is the absence of bad news. And there will be good news soon, don't doubt it. And, of course, we'll all be released. To this day, when I remember his eyes, I want to cry."

Voynich - strong, restrained, courageous political prisoner. But he can't talk about Sergei Guna, a five-year-old boy in an adult's body, sent to a camp for many years, without emotion. But Judge Shershnev hardly remembers how he sentenced Guna: there are a lot of cases, a lot of defendants, and the sentences are dictated every day from the "office", so there is no way to remember them all. But we are not Judge Shershnev. We are obliged to remember.

For years I have often written: let's not forget about political prisoners, let's always, when there is an opportunity and when there is not, talk about them, write about them, shout about them. So that they do not become a routine, a background on the wallpaper, a familiar part of life like the weather forecast. But there is an inverse, equally necessary thing. Let us remember the enemies. Let us not forget the punishers. There are so many of them that surnames merge into one continuous "petrov-sidorov". They're happy about it. So let's not let them be happy and live in peace.

They, the ordinary punishers, think that they will merge with the landscape, hide behind a mop, pretend to be a rag and escape responsibility. If anything - they are nothing, just cogs of a big machine, and who will chase a cog, when it is necessary to deal with the whole mechanism and its supporting part. A small punisher - without orders from above he is practically harmless to others, like a microbe in permafrost. And who will remember some dusty Gomel judge, when there are such colorful characters around as Karpenkov, with the face of a hereditary vandal breaking shop windows, Balaba, with pleasure beating people for a quarter of a century, or Grisha Azarenok, beating his own forehead against the wall in an ecstatic fit? We'll have to remember. Every dusty, petty, inexpressive, none. And ask for a while to shut up all those who after the fall of the regime will babble in joy about forgiveness and reconciliation. Reconciliation is only after punishment. Money in the morning, chairs in the evening, no other way.

Serezha Gunya, hold on. Soon you'll be back to your mom.

Memory, don't fail. Keep all the names. The list will be needed soon.

Irina Khalip, especially for Charter97.org.