Belarus : A human rights defender imprisoned for standing up against the oppression in Belarus

Nasta Lojka is a prominent human rights defender in Belarus who has been unjustly detained since the 28th of October 2022. She was a mere eighteen-year-old law school undergraduate when she first approached a leading Belarusian human rights activist at an event in 2008 and announced her wish to be involved. Within days, she had been hired. For the rest of her student days, Nasta devoted her free time to developing her knowledge of human rights work before eventually going on to work as a trainer in the field herself. For Nasta, it was a simple decision. This was her calling.

In the years to come, Nasta established a formidable reputation for herself amongst rights groups. She created a volunteer service for the Belarusian NGO, Viasna, and is one of the co-founders of the campaigning group, Human Constanta. She used her legal knowledge to focus on anti-discrimination and equality issues, fair trial, rights of foreigners and stateless people and informal human rights education. Something that proved a problem for the Belarusian authorities, especially for the President of the country.

The dog-loving President

The self-proclaimed President of Belarus, Alyaksandr Lukashenka, a collective farm manager, has held onto power for three decades precisely through the kind of murderous tactics and regime of terror that Nasta has spent her life battling against. Since 2020, he is accompanied at public events by Umka, a fluffy white Pomeranian who the leader has taken to holding lovingly in his arms.

Given Lukashenka’s carefully cultivated aura as the strongman of Belarus and the fact that the systematic use of torture against the hundreds of peaceful protestors held in his detention centres began to be reported around the same time as Umka first made an appearance, it did not take long for the international press to question whether the dog might be designed to humanise the so-called President’s image.

Arrest and separation of friends

On the 6th of September 2022, Nasta fatefully attended the trial of two colleagues at Minsk City Court who had been detained under a brutal crackdown on human rights activism by Belarusian authorities following the mass protests of 2020. When she objected to a policeman speaking rudely to a mother of one of the plaintiffs, she was promptly arrested. Released on the 5th of October 2022, Nasta discussed with a colleague whether she should flee her country of birth but remained adamant that she would not leave.

Less than a month later, the police arrested her on the street then lead her inside to conduct a search of her belongings. That dark day marked the last time Nasta saw her dog, Eric, whom she had rescued from a dog shelter in 2018 when he was 3 years old. Despite his original distrustfulness, Eric and Nasta quickly became inseparable. Characteristically, what traumatised Nasta the most, however, was how the police forced her to drive Eric into the tiny shower room by threatening to kill him on the spot if she did not.

We only know this because in early 2023 Nasta wrote a heartbreaking letter from prison to her beloved dog Eric, now spirited away to safety in the Czech Republic.
“I just opened the shower door and started asking you to go in there. You didn’t understand anything… In desperation, I shouted at you and kicked you into the shower. The riot police blocked the door… because you growled and jumped on the door in the narrow space. Before leaving, I begged for a long time to let you go… I cried on the stairs. And then it’s better for you not to know what happened / will happen to me.”

Unjust detention and cruel treatment

She was right. Nasta would go on to be tasered, tortured and subjected to cruel and degrading treatment as the authorities held her indefinitely on rolling detentions while they searched for an excuse to imprison her in retaliation for her work. Finally, on the 20th of June 2023, she was sentenced to seven years in prison on bogus charges, labelled a criminal and added to the terrorist watchlist. The lawyers who tried to represent her, found themselves disbarred and forced to flee the country. Nowadays, she is only allowed to communicate with her elderly mother.

The 35-year-old Nasta Lojka who sacrificed her freedom and happiness with her dog because of her extraordinary determination to stand up for the human rights and freedom of her fellow Belarusians. “Goodbye, dear dog,” she wrote as she finished her 2023 letter to Eric. “You are the most precious thing I have ever had in my life. I will love you forever.”

Please, join us in calling for the release of Nasta Lojka.