Imprisoned journalist Vatslau Areshka goes nearly blind in detention

Polit­i­cal pris­on­er Vat­slau Aresh­ka marked his fourth birth­day behind bars on Jan­u­ary 18, turn­ing 71. Human rights defend­ers have includ­ed him on the list of polit­i­cal pris­on­ers with extreme­ly vul­ner­a­ble health con­di­tions — Aresh­ka has lost almost all of his vision while impris­oned.

Vat­slau Aresh­ka. Pho­to: charter97.org

Ali­ak­san­dr Mant­se­vich, edi­tor of Rehi­hanal­na­ja Haze­ta and a for­mer polit­i­cal pris­on­er released in Sep­tem­ber 2025, told BAJ about Areshka’s health con­di­tion.

Deteriorating vision

“When I arrived at the unit in mid-Feb­ru­ary 2024, Vat­slau was one of the first peo­ple I met there. He was still read­ing books and mag­a­zines then. A lit­tle over a year and a half lat­er, when I was released, he could no longer read — the dete­ri­o­ra­tion hap­pened over sev­er­al months.

He wrote let­ters using sten­cils his wife sent him. Lines over­lapped, and she com­plained she could no longer read 70–80% of what he sent. Her let­ters came print­ed in increas­ing­ly large font to make it eas­i­er for him to read.

By the end, the font was size 18. But Vat­slau still couldn’t read them — I read them to him. He had glass­es but no longer used them because they didn’t help any­more.

He said he had a mag­ni­fy­ing glass with a light that helped more than the glass­es. But when he was trans­ferred from the Shk­lou Cor­rec­tion­al Facil­i­ty to Ivat­se­vichy, they didn’t allow him to keep the mag­ni­fy­ing glass. There’s no log­ic to it. You can only guess whether they did it delib­er­ate­ly to harm him, out of stu­pid­i­ty, or if mag­ni­fy­ing glass­es real­ly are on the list of pro­hib­it­ed items. A per­son needs this device for health rea­sons — but they didn’t allow it.”

Dangerous situations

“At night, no one refused to help him go out, but at night escorts weren’t real­ly need­ed — the cor­ri­dor is clear at night, with no obsta­cles except fire shields on the walls. Dur­ing the day there’s heavy traf­fic on the cor­ri­dor: peo­ple com­ing back from work, more peo­ple on week­ends. In short, help was need­ed dur­ing the day. But the cor­ri­dor wasn’t the biggest prob­lem — you can mem­o­rize the route.”

Prison. Draw­ing by Aleh Hruzdziovich

Aresh­ka fell and injured him­self at least twice after run­ning into obsta­cles. “The prob­lem is that when some­one injures their face, prison staff have to file a report — in case some­one assault­ed him in a con­flict. There were sev­er­al inci­dents requir­ing med­ical exam­i­na­tions. For­tu­nate­ly, noth­ing came of it, but guards sug­gest­ed one option could have been send­ing him to soli­tary con­fine­ment.”

“As for med­ical care, while I was there, all the vit­a­mins sent by his fam­i­ly were allowed. Though I lat­er heard there were some delays with his med­ical sup­plies, but I didn’t wit­ness that myself,” Mant­se­vich said.

Background

Vat­slau Aresh­ka is a Belaru­sian pub­li­cist, polit­i­cal sci­en­tist, and labor union activist. He was detained on April 19, 2022, dur­ing a search of his apart­ment as part of the “trade union case” — for “active­ly par­tic­i­pat­ing in inde­pen­dent trade union activ­i­ties” as edi­tor of the Radio-Elec­tron­ics Indus­try Work­ers’ Union bul­letin.

Vat­slau Aresh­ka at the “trade union case” tri­al. Pho­to: Vias­na

On Jan­u­ary 5, 2023, he was con­vict­ed of calls for sanc­tions, incite­ment of social hatred, and par­tic­i­pa­tion in an extrem­ist for­ma­tion. Judge Anas­tasiya Pap­ko sen­tenced the then-67-year-old Aresh­ka to eight years in prison.

In addi­tion to his trade union work, Aresh­ka was a cul­tur­al activist, researcher, and jour­nal­ist who pub­lished in jour­nals includ­ing Spad­chy­na, Arche, and pAR­Ti­san. He was also an activist for the ini­tia­tive “Experts in Defense of Kura­p­aty” and ini­tia­tor of the “Kura­p­aty Book of Hon­or” com­mem­o­rat­ing vic­tims of repres­sions.

His co-defen­dants in the trade union case, Henadz Fia­dyn­ich and Vasil Beras­neu, were both released in 2024–2025. Despite hopes among fam­i­ly and sup­port­ers, Aresh­ka was not includ­ed in the Decem­ber depor­ta­tion of polit­i­cal pris­on­ers.

Despite his seri­ous vision prob­lems, Aresh­ka has not been grant­ed dis­abil­i­ty sta­tus in the facil­i­ty.

Accord­ing to BAJ data, 28 media rep­re­sen­ta­tives are cur­rent­ly impris­oned in Belarus.