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Statkevich honored with German Social Democratic Party’s 2012 Willy Brandt Special Award for Political Courage

Imprisoned Belarusian opposition politician Mikalay Statkevich was honored with the German Social Democratic Party’s 2012 Willy Brandt Special Award for Political Courage during a ceremony held in Berlin on January 24.

The award was received by Mr. Statkevich’s wife Maryna Adamovich and his daughter Katsyaryna.

“Mikalay Statkevich was a candidate in a presidential election that was neither free nor fair,” Egon Bahr, chairman of the award committee who was an old-time friend of Chancellor Willy Brandt (1913-1992), said in his speech. “He realized that he was challenging an authoritarian regime. His only crime was his adherence to democratic values. The award that is being presented today bears the name of Willy Brandt, who once said, ‘Where freedom is not defended early and fully, it can only be won back at the price of many victims.’”

“The word ‘freedom’ has a magic meaning for us,” the 90-year-old Bahr said. “Democracy is the soul of our party. We say, ‘May Mikalay Statkevich and other political prisoners be finally released.’”

The ceremony, held at the Willy Brandt House, was attended by more than 600 guests, including prominent German and European politicians such as Gerhard Schroeder, Peer Steinbrueck and Franz Thoennes.

Ms. Adamovich read out a message from her husband.

“I could not even imagine that something like this could happen,” she said, according to website statkevich.org. “Photographs of Mikalay were screened on the stage one after another while we were speaking and then the entire audience stood up and applauded Mikalay for several minutes. We were told: ‘You are among friends here; we’ll continue to do everything we can for his release and for democracy in Belarus.’ For me, this is the most convincing evidence that solidarity has no borders. It can go through prison walls. I’ll never forget that representatives of German and international social democracy were the first to come to Minsk in early January 2011 to find out what had happened to Mikalay and push for the release of him and other political prisoners illegally captured following the election. They continue to do this today. We thank them for this.”

Mr. Statkevich, currently 56, has been in prison for more than two years now. In May 2011, a district judge in Minsk sentenced him to six years in a medium-security prison, finding him guilty of organizing "mass disorder" in connection with a post-election protest staged in the Belarusian capital city on December 19, 2010.

In a trial that took place in a prison in Shklow, Mahilyow region, on January 12, 2012, a judge found Mr. Statkevich guilty of violating prison rules and ordered him placed in a higher-security correctional institution for three years.

The charge was brought against Mr. Statkevich because of his missing number tag and failure to mention handkerchiefs among his personal items.

Since January 2012, Mr. Statkevich has been held in a two-man cell in Prison No. 4 in Mahilyow.

According to Ms. Adamovich, in a letter received last week, her husband said that he had once again been told to file an application for a presidential pardon. As Ms. Adamovich told BelaPAN, her husband wrote in the letter that it was the first time in six months that he had been urged to apply for a pardon. “They said to him, ‘Stop play this hero vs. bandits game, get out of prison and go to the seaside,’” Ms. Adamovich said.

She stressed that applying to Alyaksandr Lukashenka for a pardon was out of the question for her husband. “Mikalay has repeatedly said in his letters that this is totally unacceptable to him,” she said.

So-called political prisoners can be released, including before the expiration of their terms, in accordance with the law, Mr. Lukashenka said on January 15 at a news conference in Minsk. When asked why he was holding his political rivals in prison, including former presidential candidate Statkevich, the Belarusian leader said that there were no political rivals to him there. “He [Statkevich] is no rival to me,” he said. “There were 10 candidates for President [in 2010]. What of that? What makes him my rival or opponent?”