Belarusian Olympic medalist Aliaksandra Herasimenia says her new reality living in exile feels a bit more like a dystopian novel with each passing day.
After fleeing Belarus for Poland earlier this year following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Herasimenia was dealt a 12-year prison sentence in absentia on Monday.
Until her recent departure from home, the 36-year-old helped run the Belarusian Sport Solidarity Foundation (BSSF) along with Alexander Opeikin, who was also sentenced to 12 years in absentia on Monday. Their foundation offered financial and legal support to athletes targeted by president Alexander Lukashenko and other Belarusian authorities.
Herasimenia’s official charges included “calls for sanctions” and other actions “aimed at harming the national security” of Belarus. On Monday, it was reported that her apartment and car were seized by the government along with $48,000 in her bank accounts, but Herasimenia clarified to SwimSwam that the apartment was actually property of her parents.
“By law they do not have the right to take the apartment, but as we know, there are no laws in Belarus,” Herasimenia said. “What is happening in Belarus now compares only to North Korea. They fire people for any disagreement with their superiors, put people in jail for any manifestation of disagreement with authorities, and these terms go for years.
“George Orwell’s ‘1984’ is our reality now,” she added. “Whoever read will understand.”
According to the human rights group Viasna, 1,439 political prisoners are currently behind bars in Belarus.
Herasimenia’s Belarusian passport will soon be canceled, so she’s applying for international protection in Poland. She’s currently offering swimming lessons in Warsaw.
“International protection gives the same rights as a resident of the country, but it is impossible to vote in elections,” Herasimenia explained. “Plus the opportunity to move around the world. Protection can be obtained in one country that takes responsibility for you, but it spreads around the world.
“In any case, I will give individual classes, whether I will have protection or not — I need to feed my family, and I love my job.”
A sprint freestyle specialist, Herasimenia competed at three Olympic Games in 2008, 2012, and 2016 before her retirement in 2019. She won silver medals in the 50 and 100 free at the London 2012 Olympics, and also took bronze in the 50 free at the 2016 Rio Olympics.
She bet on the wrong horse
long-term (10yrs), there is no “right horse”
Just to put it in perspective: She can’t return to the country she was born/lived in. I’m not sure if the article or comments are applying the magnitude of this situation
Speaking of 1984: the 9 (and counting) “Twitter Files” releases show various US government agencies (FBI, DHS, CDC, CIA) made Twitter their own client enterprise. They advocated for points of view they didn’t like (that were against their preferred narrative) to be shut down or shadow-banned.
I have wondered if a similar thing happened last January to March at SwimSwam in the lead up to the Women’s NCAA championship meet. It certainly felt like points of view which defended the integrity of women’s sports were diminished. John Lohn at Swimming World pulled no punches in his dismay at what was happening.
dear god there are far bigger fish to fry!
1984 was written to address Orwell’s observations of the totalitarian regimes of Nazi Germany and Stalin’s USSR, as well as his concerns about anti-democratic actions by the nations the Anglo-Sphere as part of their war against “Fascism”.
Above all Orwell was fascinated with the potential to control language. In a 1946 essay titled “Politics and the English Language” he noted the fact that over the course of the war that the word Fascism had lost all meaning except for being “something not desirable”. He noted how every single regime and their supporters would claim it to be democratic regardless of the truth of how it operated. But more broadly he noted how this corruption of definition could destroy the… Read more »
Cool story, bro.
This situation happens in Cuba to. Its terrible.
It happens almost everywhere, even in the (gasp) USA.