Your contribution to the General Collection is support for various areas of the foundation's work, such as helping people in difficult life circumstances, supporting prisoners and their families, evacuation, as well as consultations and other important initiatives of the BYSOL foundation.
HOW IS THE MONEY FROM THE GENERAL COLLECTION SPENT?
Your help goes to support those who need it most right now:
- Arrests, torture, imprisonment — people manage to avoid all this thanks to the work of our evacuation service.
- Financial support for prisoners, released people and their families is emergency help at the most needed moment.
- Our single point of entry: free consultations of the BYSOL Hotline:
1. leaving and legalization in a new country;
2. how to organize a collection on the bysol.org platform
3. What other help can you get from BYSOL and partner organizations.
- Our fundraising platform bysol.org collects a million euros a year. Thanks to these amounts, our assistance is prompt and significant.
WHY IS OUR SOLIDARITY A MARATHON?
There have been no quick changes in the country, and our solidarity, which was seen as a short-distance run, has turned into a marathon. It requires patience and endurance from us, and the readiness to come to the rescue at any moment. Thanks to your donations to the general collection, we implement solidarity programs, and monthly subscriptions are especially important, which allow us to plan our work for the future. Even small amounts that we receive regularly merge into a powerful stream of your solidarity.
How to apply for a monthly subscription?
You see this option when you enter the donation amount on the bysol.org website. For monthly support, you need to select the “Subscription” option.
Once a month, the amount you have chosen will be debited from your card. If necessary, you can cancel the subscription at any time.
Let's keep working!
BYSOL Foundation Team
* By making a donation to the general collection, you agree to the donation amount being spent
on the above-described areas of work of the BYSOL Foundation.
What does this look like in reality? With the consent of our heroes, we want to tell their stories and how your help changed their lives. They say thank you too.
Escaping from the clutches of GUBAZIK
Alexander Romanovich, an activist, politician and human rights defender from Pinsk, remained in Belarus until the spring of 2024. He went through several arrests, searches, constant surveillance, detentions and torture. And even in such conditions, Alexander did what he could: he went to “political” trials, helped spread information about the crimes of security forces and the courts. But all this had its price.
“At home, when a car drives up, you look to see if it’s the police. Every time before going to bed, you clean your phone, correspondence, history,” Alexander recalls.
Now he is in Poland, safe. But just recently the reality was completely different.
“On March 14, they broke into my house, literally knocked down the doors. Two Gubazikovites and four fighters from the “Storm” squad. They pulled me out of bed, threw me on the floor. They screamed, threatened. They used painful techniques. They twisted my arms, raising them as high as possible behind my back. Hellish pain. One of them took out a nail and a hammer and began to threaten to nail my genitals to the floor. He even pretended to do so several times, swinging the hammer past the nail. They found a T-shirt with Pagonya in my things, specially picked out the oldest stretched sweatpants and forced me to put them on. They took me away in a minibus, throwing me face down on the floor.”
Then there were interrogations, reports and trials, a day “for disobedience”. They forced me to star in an ONT propaganda film.
Apparently, knowing about Alexander’s human rights activities, they decided to prosecute him in the case against the human rights center “Viasna”. “I thought that the probability of being jailed was fifty-fifty. But my friends sent me an article in which one of the Minsk prosecutors bragged that they had managed to “suspend the activities” of people associated with “Viasna” in Pinsk, Brest and Baranovichi, and that a “legal assessment” would be given. I then realized that this 100% meant a trial for me and a term of 3 to 7 years.” The security forces installed a spy program on Alexander’s phone to keep the activist “under surveillance”. However, he decided that he needed to leave urgently and turned to the BYSOL Foundation for help.
“With the help of BYSOL, I left for a third country, but in which I was also unsafe. I stayed there for about three weeks. The BYSOL Foundation helped me with logistics, temporary housing, a little money for food, tickets, and to get a visa to one of the EU countries. And there, on the spot, they met me and helped me with household items, — Alexander recalls. — If it weren't for the confidence that I wouldn't be abandoned alone and the financial assistance, I would probably have stayed in Belarus and would now be waiting for my trial in a pretrial detention center. I would also have become a burden for my family." For the BYSOL Foundation evacuation service, this was one of the most difficult cases of organizing an emergency departure.
In Poland, Alexander is going to receive international protection and organized a personal collection on the BYSOL Foundation platform.
Arrested on a denunciation, helped by solidarity
Irina Serezhonok with her husband Mikhail and two children fled Belarus, as she says, “not somewhere,” but precisely “from”: from the regime, from prison, from broken lives and the deprivation of the childhood of two sons.
Irina and her husband were arrested at home, people in black masks led them out in handcuffs. “It was especially hard for our youngest son Fyodor, he was 7 at the time. He still stutters and is afraid to let us go for more than 15-20 minutes,” says Irina.
Together with her husband, she fell under the steamroller of repression due to a denunciation by a once close person. Their child’s godfather, a former investigator who served time for bribes, denounced them: he sent the security forces a photo of Irina with a white-red-white flag. Later, the Gubopikovites showed them this “evidence.” The court sentenced Irina and her husband to three years of “house arrest”. Before that, there were three long months in a detention center. During this time, practically nothing was left of the family business. The future that the Belarusian state was preparing for the Serezhenok family was endless police checks, another three years of supervision, and possibly new criminal cases.
“When I ended up in a detention center, in prison, I saw the system from the inside. How it works. And the state is organized in the same way. I got out after three months and saw the same prison in the city — only a bigger one. A huge number of police, patrols at every step,” Irina recalls. Together with her husband, they were sure that even after “chemistry” they would not be allowed to live in peace. Therefore, almost immediately after the trial, they decided to leave, while it was possible.
“I learned about the BYSOL Foundation in the fall, already in Lithuania. We ended up here, having nothing — no profession, no knowledge. But I opened my own club based on interests, while having a very superficial knowledge of how social networks work. I went to study on SMM courses organized by the Foundation, and also studied targeting and some tools for work. They helped us with medical care — after all, we never got examined after the arrest, — Irina recalls. — We got examined here in Lithuania, in a good medical center. When we were detained, my husband wore braces, he was badly beaten, I saw blood and was very worried about him. In Lithuania, they helped him get all his teeth treated. My husband also started learning English, we found a business partner and are planning to open our own business in the fall."
Irina and her family are grateful for the help: “When you work all your life and know that nothing happens for free, you especially begin to appreciate such help and solidarity. I want to tell the people who support the General Collection that this is a very important cause, and you never know which side you will end up on tomorrow. By helping others, you help yourself.”
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