21/09/30 12:01:59.46 GvuBtalq.net
The women became the face of resistance to Mr Lukashenko's quarter-century-long rule, a suddenly unleashed demand for change.
But Ms Tikhanovskaya soon had to flee for safety. Ms Kolesnikova was then bundled into a van in Minsk by unknown men and vanished. This August, she was convicted and sentenced in a closed trial along with an opposition lawyer, Maxim Znak.
'Prison is a vile place'
Home is now a 2.5 m x 3.5 m (8.2 ft x 11.4 ft) cell with "two bunks, a toilet, a washbasin, a TV, a kettle, a mug, a bowl, a table, a bench and a view of the sky through the window bars". The activist says the prison exercise yard is just as tiny, but she runs around it for 50 minutes each day.
Fear and violence in the jails of Belarus
She spends the rest of the time reading, studying English and German and writing up to 200 letters a month. She allows herself just one note of complaint: that "everyone smokes everywhere", which is bad for her lungs as a flautist.