Human Rights: Prisoner of Conscience: Ales Pushkin

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Ales Pushkin

In July 2023 Ales Pushkin, a Belarusian dissident artist, who often directed his art against the president, Alexander Lukashenko, died in a prison in Grodno, a small town in the western part of the country. He was 57.

His wife announced that he had died of unknown causes, while a human rights organization, Viasna, declared that he wasn’t known to have been sick.

Pushkin, a contemporary artist and cartoonist, was arrested in March 2021 and later sentenced to five years in jail for inciting hatred and the “desecration of state symbols”. According to the prosecution, he was “rehabilitating and justifying Nazism” by displaying a portrait of a controversial Belarusian Anti-Soviet nationalist.

A number of local and international human rights organizations viewed this verdict as political retribution, and repeatedly called for his release. They said that the artist was jailed because he used his art as a tool of political opposition to Lukashenko, the country’s authoritarian leader for nearly 30 years, who violently put down the wave of anti-government protests against his claim to have won the 2020 elections. Viasna estimates that there are currently around 1,500 political prisoners in Belarus, including journalists, writers, political opponents, and civil activists, and that many have been tortured and beaten.

Pushkin earned a living by restoring historical buildings and church frescoes across the country. However, this was not the first time Pushkin’s political art had angered authorities in Belarus and gotten him in trouble.

In a 2011 interview with the online platform openDemocracy, Pushkin stated: “There are two kinds of Belarusian artists,’ then, as he drew a line down the back of an envelope, he continued, ‘official and unofficial. But it’s not a question of ‘this art is good, this art is bad,’ it’s a question of complicity and conformism.”

"Ales Pushkin was the embodiment of the indomitable spirit of the Belarusian people. He died as a political prisoner of the regime, and the responsibility lies with his jailor, Lukashenka, and his cronies."

Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya

One of his most famous performances, called “Dung for the President,” took place in 1999, to mark the fifth year since Lukashenko took over. In front of the presidential building in Minsk, the capital, the artist overturned a red wheelbarrow full of dung, then placed a portrait of the president on it, then pinned that with a pitchfork. He was detained immediately and later given a two-year suspended prison sentence.

A few years earlier, while decorating a newly-built church in his home village of Bobr, he painted the faces of sinners to resemble those of Lukashenko, the head of the Belarussian Orthodox Church, and some senior state officials. These frescoes were later painted over.

Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, a Belarusian opposition leader now living in exile, blamed Lukashenko for the artist's death. "Ales Pushkin was the embodiment of the indomitable spirit of the Belarusian people. He died as a political prisoner of the regime, and the responsibility lies with his jailor, Lukashenka, and his cronies," she wrote on Twitter.

"Ales used his art to fight for freedom and build a new Belarus without tyranny," she said. "He dreamed of a free and democratic Belarus. Now we must continue his work and make his dream come true."