Kamenny Log Hotel

• Irina Khalip
• 26.09.2025, 16:40

A history lesson from Statkevich.

In 2020, when Belarus started arresting young people and teenagers, I thought, "Wow, these guys were born later than Statkevich went to jail for the first time!" Nikolai's first detention center was in 1999, after the Freedom March.

Then, at the intersection of Pervomayskaya and Pulikhova streets, the demonstrators were met by chains of OMON and special forces. Statkevich did not want bloodshed and began to lead people away from the dangerous place. There was still bloodshed - the demonstrators were attacked by law enforcers, and in response pieces of road tiles flew towards the punishers. Many people were detained and served administrative "24 hours". Statkevich was criminally charged.

After a quarter of a century and four sentences, no one knows where Nikolai is. More precisely, it is clear that he is behind bars again, but it is not known where exactly. If earlier at least the geographical point was known - a prison or a particular colony - and relatives could write complaints to the administration, send parcels and letters, and bring packages, now there is nowhere to write, send, or bring. Of course, it can be argued that even before, especially in the last three years, letters were not allowed, parcels and packages were not accepted, calls and visits were refused, and complaints were answered in such a way that it would have been better to keep silent. But knowing the exact address was the thin, transparent, elusive thread that loved ones could still hold on to. Because every letter written, every complaint to the administration, every attempt to send a parcel is an action. It is an opportunity not to go crazy because you do nothing for your relative-prisoner. This is psychological relief: I do not lower my hands, I act, I save.

Now Nikolai has no address. Without his medication. Without the meager personal belongings he had with him on the bus. No way to make himself known. And more and more often the words began to sound from different irons: "Well, what did he achieve by this? He would have done more good there than in a cell in total isolation". Come on, gentlemen. With his desperate act, he, not being a historian, taught everyone who knew nothing about our modern history before, a lesson that you will not forget after the exam. The material has been learned on purpose.

A few days ago I met Karin, the adopted daughter of Rwandan hero Paul Rusesabagina. He was the one who, in 1994 during the genocide, as manager of the Thousand Hills Hotel in Kigali, saved over a thousand people by sheltering them in the hotel. He saved Karin too - her parents were killed and Paul took her and her sister from the orphanage and adopted her. So, Karin said that when Hollywood made the movie "Hotel Rwanda", viewers around the world finally became interested in what was happening in a distant African country in the mid-nineties. And if before they had heard something approximate, as if one tribe was running around with machetes and slaughtering another, but nobody knew who was slaughtering whom - whether Tutsi Hutu or Hutu Tutsi, nobody knew, the Hollywood movie changed the situation. It became a history lesson.

A the return of Nikolai Statkevich to Belarus from the Lithuanian border is itself a ready-made Hollywood script. However, as well as his entire biography. And the Belarusians, who followed what was happening to Nikolai in real time thanks to messages in the media and social networks and images from surveillance cameras at the border, then began to study the recent history of their country. Of course, many people knew who Statkevich was before that. And it wouldn't have occurred to them to say anything of the series "he would be useful abroad". But for those who thought that nothing had happened in Belarus until 2020, Nikolai Statkevich's act opened a history textbook.

And in that textbook - the entire history of independent Belarus. And on almost every page - Nikolai. Here in 1991, during the putsch, the young officer Statkevich is the only Belarusian serviceman who publicly speaks at a rally against the GKChP. Here is the page of 1995 - Statkevich heads the party of social-democrats. Here is 1996 - the first "administrative offense" and the first arrest after the protest. Here is the famous Freedom March in 1999 and the first criminal case. Here is 2004, the second criminal case and two years of "chemistry". No one in Belarus knew then what article 342 of the Criminal Code was, but Statkevich had already been tried under it. Here's a five-year sentence after the elections and protests in 2010, here's the release in 2015, here's another arrest in 2020, here's a 14-year sentence. And then there's the Kamenny Log border crossing. The following pages are still frighteningly blank. But do not doubt, soon they will again have a portrait of Nikolai Statkevich and the next chapter.

And we are also on all these pages - somewhere near, nearby, in different chapters, in different years, third in the fifth row, or in the foreground, or even behind the scenes. There is enough room in history for everyone. It's just that Statkevich has a little more.

Irina Khalip, especially for Charter97.org.