Liavon Khalatryan
My parents are Armenian, but I was born in Tbilisi and lived for a while in Azerbaijan. When the Armenian pogroms started, we were forced to leave the region. My father was sent to a military unit in the city of Vitebsk. Then the Soviet Union collapsed and I ended up staying in Belarus. I studied marketing, and for a while was involved with the Armenian community.
I got married, and my son was born. I opened two bars in Minsk. In 2020, I became a volunteer at the headquarters of presidential candidate Viktar Babaryka. Babaryka was arrested just before the elections. After the elections, I was also arrested and accused of organizing mass riots. I spent six months in a detention center and was sentenced to two years of restricted freedom. This meant that I was sent to an open-type correctional facility, where I worked on a farm. It was hard labor.
People often imagine bulls on farms happily running around in the grass. In reality, they never leave the stable. The people in the barns are like police officers. They are in charge of animals- the animals depend on them, and any violence can be used. The locals are very cruel to animals. On the first day, I looked at this violence with shock. It was unacceptable to me. However, a couple of weeks passed and I was running around with a stick and hitting the bulls. I started to think about the police violence. They live in an environment where violence is acceptable. It never occurs to them that something is wrong. While working on a farm and beating bulls, I realized why this happened to them. I also could have said, “I won’t beat these bulls,” but I didn’t.
When I returned home, my little son didn’t recognize me. Later, of course, he remembered. Due to the threat of being arrested once again, I left for Poland. My son Miki stayed with his mom in Belarus, and we rarely see each other. He visits two to three times a year and doesn’t like to talk on the phone, but sometimes we play video games online. That is how we communicate.
Liavon Khalatryan arrived in Poland in 2023.
