“When I’m Out of Here: Staying Human in a Dictator’s Jail” by Hanna Komar – Voices from Belarusian prison cells3 min read
On 8 September 2020, while taking part in a demonstration in Minsk in the aftermath of another fraudulent Belarusian presidential election, Belarusian poet Hanna Komar was arrested. She would spend the next ten days in jail. In her new work titled When I’m Out of Here: Staying Human in a Dictator’s Jail, Komar recounts those ten days, not only as her own story, but as a story of thousands of Belarusians whose lives were changed by the state’s violent crackdown on dissent.
A story of many, told as one
Almost six years ago, Belarus witnessed the largest protests in its history. The demonstrations were met with mass arrests and widespread repression. Since then, human rights organisation Viasna has recognised more than 4,700 people as political prisoners. Most of these prisoners were detained during the 2020 protests, although many were arrested in the years that followed.
In the book’s foreword, Komar explains that she wrote the work “to understand – my own experience, and myself as part of the collective one.” Rather than offering a straightforward single-view memoir, she has put together fragments of testimony, memories and reflections from women arrested alongside her. The result is a collective narrative that dissolves the boundary between the personal and the shared. Inspired by the work of Nobel laureate Svetlana Alexievich, When I’m Out of Here allows individual voices and memories to build a broader portrait of what it meant to be arrested in Belarus in 2020.
When I’m Out of Here is not an easy read, either in form or in subject matter. Different recollections alternate in font, colour and style. The text is free in its punctuation and structure, making it initially difficult to find a rhythm as a reader. Yet I found that this challenge ultimately becomes one of the book’s strengths. When I stopped approaching the work as a conventional narrative and instead imagined the voices speaking aloud, the text came alive and each testimony began to speak to me differently. These were no longer words on a page but living voices recounting moments of fear, resilience and survival. Reading the book became less like following a story and more like listening to a group of witnesses.
Women’s experiences at the forefront
A defining aspect of Komar’s book is its focus on women’s experiences during the protests and in detention. Komar, like many of the women in this book, was arrested while participating in a women’s march protesting the abduction of opposition leader Maryia Kalesnikava.
In their recollections, women describe being mocked by male police officers for speaking Belarusian, subjected to unwanted flirtation and intimidation, and made to feel constantly unsafe. In doing so, the book documents not just political imprisonment but rather the gendered realities of state violence, and these testimonies reveal how gender became another means through which power was exercised.
Yet, woven through these harrowing accounts are many moments of women’s solidarity. As women support one another in small but significant ways, these acts of care and humanity demonstrate that even in places as dehumanising as a prison cell, humanity can survive.
A reminder that the story is not over
As the recent mass releases of Belarusian political prisoners are – rightfully so – met with celebration, When I’m Out of Here stands as an important act of remembrance, making sure that these experiences are not forgotten. Komar reminds us that authoritarian repression cannot be measured solely in arrests and releases, but also in the lives it disrupts, the trauma it leaves behind, and the exile it forces upon so many. In doing so, When I’m Out of Here asks readers not merely to witness suffering, but to listen to it and remember it.
