Is minimal reconciliation possible in Belarus?
Pre-emptive reconciliation efforts matter for Belarus’s future stability. The longer it is delayed, the higher the risks.
September 11, 2026 -
Alana Gebremariam
- 
AnalysisIssue 5 2026Magazine
Photo: Horn_et / Shutterstock
In mid-November 2020, I was one of 12 young people detained for our involvement in student and youth protests. The authorities called it the “student case”, and we were sentenced to two and a half years in a penal colony, in what was widely understood as a warning to other young people. The sentence was a powerful reminder of the injustice and anger that would shape Belarusian society in the years that followed.
At the same time, my years in prison showed me how much more complicated the relationship between victims and members of the system can be. Some lawyers who publicly supported Alyaksandr Lukashenka and rejected the 2020 protests nevertheless took on political cases and sometimes defended their clients more vigorously than expected. Some prison staff, formally part of the repressive apparatus, occasionally acted beyond their instructions in ways that brought them no obvious benefit.
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belarus, reconciliation, repressions
