Belarus Government Massively Shifting Prisoners from One Prison Camp to Another -- and Moscow Appears to Be Doing So as Well

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 17 – The recent search for the whereabouts of opposition leader Aleksey Navalny suggests that Moscow may now be copying what has already become an unprecedented practice in Belarus: the frequent and massive shift of prisoners, especially political ones, from one camp to another.

            That practice which has generally remained under the radar screen has now been documented by journalists from Belarusian service of Radio Liberty (https://www.svaboda.org/a/32778125.html in Belarusian; translated into Russian at https://charter97.org/ru/news/2024/1/18/579886/).

            Moving prisoners about like this makes it more difficult for their friends and supporters to stay in contact with them and blocks the formation of support groups within the prison system. As yet, it represents a significant increase in the repressive nature of the prison system first of all in Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s Belarus and apparently also in Vladimir Putin’s Russia.