Across Belarusian prisons, wardens habitually force political prisoners to clear every trace of snow — down to the asphalt — in winter. Detainees carry sack after sack of snow off site and usually have no time or chance to wash or warm up afterward.
Leanid Sudalenko, a human rights activist sentenced to three years and held in Vitebsk, recalls arriving in the dead of winter. “As soon as you enter the prison, everyone — including those in quarantine — is ordered out to the courtyard to start shoveling,” he says. Prisoners are handed improvised shovels made from plywood nailed to broomsticks and told to remove snow until the blacktop is visible. “No, not a single snowflake is allowed to be seen at the prison,” Sudalenko says.
Mostly political prisoners are assigned to snow duty. Minsk-based rights group Viasna says Belarus currently holds more than 1,100 political prisoners. Sudalenko says refusing or avoiding the task leads to punishment — solitary confinement or bans on visits and packages. Snow removal doesn’t count as regular labor, so prisoners must rise hours earlier than normal to finish it, often drenched in sweat with inadequate time or facilities to wash.
Prisoners must also assemble outdoors for roll call three times a day; each roll call can last up to an hour and is never moved indoors or shortened, even in sub-zero temperatures. Solitary confinement, to which many political prisoners are subjected, compounds the cold: heaters often don’t work, blankets are withheld, and inmates sleep on the floor or bare metal cots. Warm underwear may be confiscated.
Former political prisoner Darya Afanasyeva, who spent two winters in the Gomel Women’s Penal Colony — where opposition politician Maria Kolesnikova also served five years before her unexpected December 2025 release — describes relentless early shifts. If snow begins to fall, there is no respite: after work prisoners must head out to shovel. Those with money can buy better shovels; others make do. Prisoners must not only scrape asphalt clean but bag the snow and carry it away so administrators never see it. Women fill sack-sized bags or use shopping bags, carrying or dragging them to large piles behind the canteen and showers.
Health needs are ignored. Afanasyeva says she was forbidden to lift heavy loads due to a medical condition but was still forced to carry snow. One winter, illness affected perhaps 40% of inmates; administrators discussed quarantine but ended up underreporting illnesses instead. Sick prisoners are often made to wait outside in the freezing cold to collect medicine. Structural problems in some blocks — for example, a leaky roof in Gomel’s cellblock 13 — mean prisoners must wear heavy coats even while sleeping.
Women are prohibited from wearing pants in Belarusian prisons and must wear skirts or dresses; in winter they may wear prison-issue or family-supplied leggings underneath. Without support from home, inmates lack warm underwear, scarves or proper footwear; some wrap tights around their necks for warmth, only to have guards confiscate them, and some place sanitary pads inside shoes because issue footwear is thin and damp.
Former prisoners say the experience leaves lasting trauma: winter now triggers memories of suffering rather than joy. Sudalenko calls the administrators’ demands a mockery and a form of torture. Afanasyeva says women sometimes volunteer for extra indoor shifts to avoid being sent outside to shovel. “After what I went through at the penal colony, I no longer associate winter with the joy of childhood but with suffering,” she says.
This article was translated by Jon Shelton
