Belarusian opposition politician Palina Sharenda-Panasyuk was at home in the western city of Brest in January 2021 when the police broke down her door and led her away in handcuffs as her 4-year-old son looked on.
Sharenda-Panasyuk, 48, was subsequently sentenced to three years in prison on charges of assaulting police and insulting Belarus's dictatorial president, Alyaksandr Lukashenka. And shortly before her planned release earlier this month, she was hit with fresh charges likely to keep her in prison for the indefinite future.
For her son Stakh, the incident proved traumatic. He developed speech difficulties that he is now beginning to overcome in Lithuania, where Sharenda-Panasyuk's husband, Andrey Sharenda, fled with the couple's children following her arrest.
"He just stopped talking," Sharenda told Current Time, a Russian-language network run by RFE/RL in cooperation with VOA. "He was diagnosed with a speech delay. For two years we lived and dealt with this diagnosis. Fortunately, in the year we've been here in Vilnius, we've managed somehow to overcome this situation thanks to a psychologist and a speech therapist."
"Stakh will go to a normal school. But you need to understand that the child was robbed of almost his entire childhood," he added.
Sharenda-Panasyuk is among more than 1,400 political prisoners currently behind bars in Belarus after being swept up in a wave of arrests targeting Lukashenka critics after he was declared the winner of a disputed 2020 presidential election.
For relatives of these prisoners, the incarceration and absence of their loved ones is traumatic -- particularly for their children.
It is crucial for the children in these cases to have a supportive adult nearby during this period of absence, psychologist Natalya Stankevich told Current Time.
"An adult who can cry, but at the same time can speak with the child: 'Yes, I am very worried about Mama. Let's write a letter to her together.' With a child, there must be someone who keeps a presence of mind. Not a person who cries 24/7," Stankevich said.
Andrey Sharenda says he is trying to create some sense of normalcy for Stakh and their older son, 14-year-old Slavomir, during their exile in Vilnius.
"I understand that it's much more difficult for my wife now. Palina is undergoing all kinds of torment and suffering. And I understand that I can't just complain about life or succumb, succumb to despair, or fall into some kind of depression," Sharenda told Current Time.
Sharenda said he shows his sons photographs of their mother, whom he says his younger son is beginning to forget.
'Papa, Papa: Peek-A-Boo'
In December 2021, Ihar Losik, a journalist with RFE/RL's Belarus Service, was sentenced to 15 years in prison in December 2021 on several charges, including organizing mass riots, incitement to social hatred, and several other charges that remain unclear.
Following his imprisonment, Losik's wife, Darya, told Current Time how their young daughter Palina would take Darya's mobile phone and say: "Papa, papa: peek-a-boo."
"Now she just asks me to show photographs of Ihar. She brings him her toy dishes and starts to feed him and play with a ball. It's difficult for me…to talk about how my daughter is acting," she said in the interview.
Darya Losik herself was subsequently arrested and sentenced to two years in prison in January after being convicted on charges of facilitating extremist activity. The United States and the EU have both denounced the imprisonment of Ihor and Darya Losik, whose daughter is living with her grandparents, as politically motivated.
When Belarusian journalist Larysa Shchyrakova was arrested in December 2022, meanwhile, her teenage son Svyatoslau was taken to an orphanage, where he lived for nearly a month until his father, a longtime resident in Russia, was able to gather documentation to take custody of the child.
Other relatives of Shchyrakova, who went on trial last month in the southeastern city of Homel, were not allowed to take Svyatoslau from the orphanage.
Shchyrakova's trial on charges of facilitating extremist activities and discrediting Belarus is being held behind closed doors. She could face up to seven years in prison if convicted.
On August 9, the third anniversary of the presidential election in Belarus that was followed by unprecedented protests, triggering Lukashenka's massive crackdown on dissent, exiled opposition leader Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya said "the truth is on our side."
She described her compatriots as "unbreakable" in the face of Lukashena's efforts "to deprive Belarusians of hope, their loved ones, freedom, motherland, and independence."
