03 Aug 2010

Re-Discovering Belarus

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As much as people like going abroad to see Europe or even farther if they are lucky (and no visas can stop that urge!) it seems to have become popular to travel around Belarus, discovering our own country. And though tourism infrastructure leaves much to be desired; and very often what you find is just another small soviet town with the statue of Lenin on the central square named after him, or remainders of an old palace which is falling apart because of careless neglect – sometimes you get to see a small piece of old mosaic on a half destroyed wall or a cross carved on an ancient stone and that makes you feel like touching the history and being a part of it. These moments help us reinforce our identity as Belarusians, a people with things to be proud of, things we want to keep for the future. One could say that such trips could be a recepy for our soar
many people take the adventurous approach and jus
I often told my foreign friends that due to the wars and the soviet rule in the XX’s century many of architectural monuments in Belarus disappeared forever. Apparently it is not true and besides a few old churches in Minsk and regional capitals one can find such beautiful cathedrals as the one in Herviaty on the boarder with Lithuania

As much as people like going abroad to see Europe or even farther if they are lucky (and no visas can stop that urge!) it seems that is becoming  popular for Belarusians to travel around Belarus. And though tourism infrastructure leaves much to be desired; and very often what you find is just another small soviet town with the statue of Lenin on the central square named after him, or remainders of an old palace which is falling apart because of careless neglect – sometimes you get to see a small piece of old mosaic on a fallen wall or a cross carved on an ancient stone, and that makes you feel like you’ve travelled back in time and that you are part of history. These moments help us reinforce our identity as Belarusians, a people with history and culture to be proud of, things we want to keep for the future. One could say that such trips could be a prescription to cure the chronic national identity deficiency of Belarusians.

Continue reading…

02 Aug 2010

About the Right to “Connect”

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Title: Internet again victim of the state’s Regulation ideology
Life in Belarus does not seem to be getting easier. Legislators don’t like to be lazy and every now and then produce something eyebrow-raising.
By now there is no doubt that “Regulation” has become the state ideology of Belarus, but what we did not know before is how far it can go. For example, who could know that Belarusian law-makers would go through with the project of the Internet regulation! At the same time, the Code of Education is being announced to be almost ready for more than 4 years by now, but the work is still in progress. Apparently, regulating the Internet is a much bigger priority, especially given the upcoming political events in the country and the fact that the Internet is probably one of the last platforms for open discussion in the country. Therefore, it needs regulation! Or so they think.
Below are some new rules for those who want to be active online.
From July 1st, 2010, people who access the Internet from Internet-cafes and other public Internet access spots have to be identified by their passports or other ID types. To access the Internet with their own laptops via wifi networks users have to buy special cards, which can be bought upon submission of passport data. Information about the sites they visited will be stored in special journals for a year and will be accessible to law-enforcement and justice institutions like police, KGB, courts, etc.
All registered legal entities and natural persons with online sites that are hosted abroad, are obliged to move their web-pages to Belarus to local hosting companies.
Individuals can skip registration, but they will not be able to locate their web-pages on the servers inside Belarus without it. Registration of individuals’ web-pages which are located on the servers of “Beltelekom” will be realized by Internet services providers.
Web-pages that are hosted by free-of-charge servers also have to be officially registered. The same goes for sub-domain pages (like logbook.generation.by, for example).
People running unregistered web-pages will not be able to administer any types of business via these web-pages, including publishing advertisement materials.
Submission of false data during the registration of online resources will be punished with measures which have not yet even been named in the law. Everyone is full of suspense to find out!
And that’s not all! The law is being constantly developed. New clauses will regulate blocking access to some web-pages that will contain “information legally banned for distribution” (and you can imagine how widely this phrase can be interpreted given the specifics of Belarusian political environment). It is known already that access to such web-pages will be blocked in all state institutions, including educational institutions. Private users may request banning access to such web-pages by their Internet providers.
Now, 1 month after the law was reinforced, around 15 000 online resources (according to some estimates it is less than a half of active web-sites in Belarus) have been registered. It was announced that Belarusian hosting companies will not get the right to own servers outside of Belarus. As a result one can observe mass immigration of Belarusian web-sites abroad. Those are online resources which are administered by individuals of course, because they still have the right to do so.
It must be mentioned though that dozens of Belarusian NGOs and online newspapers do not have official registration, so their online resources in this story are considered as the ones owned by individuals. They are not interested in storing all their data in the center of Miensk with the state’s hand on the switcher. Another disadvantage is that the technical level of Belarusian data centers is rather low and is not able to manage the crowd of all the Belarusian Internet in one place.
I find it best to finish this post with a quote from the book “Paranoia” by a modern Belarusian author, Victor Martinovich: “Peculiarity of our age is in the fact that one can write anti-utopias based on reality. One does not have to create a fictional “1984” any more. It is enough to look around.”

Life in Belarus does not seem to be getting easier. Legislators don’t like to be lazy and every now and then produce something eyebrow-raising.

By now there is no doubt that “Regulation” has become the state ideology of Belarus, but what we did not know before is how far it can go. For example, who could know that Belarusian law-makers would go through with the project of the Internet regulation! At the same time, the Code of Education is being announced to be almost ready for more than 4 years by now, but the work is still in progress. Apparently, regulating the Internet is a much bigger priority, especially given the upcoming political events in the country and the fact that the Internet is probably one of the last platforms for open discussion in the country. Therefore, it needs regulation! Or so they think.

Below are some new rules for those who want to be active online.

Continue reading…

02 Aug 2010

Belarus Inside Out

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Belarus Inside Out
The Internet community in Belarus is quite big but still resembles a village where everyone knows everyone. People, who are active in by-net, live all around the world and often meet others who live in different countries. And that makes the network of interesting, creative, motivated and a bit crazy people even bigger. Which is great! Especially when one puts such a challenging goal in front of themselves as to turn a whole country inside-out, and uncover what is hidden under the layers of mass media stereotypes.
Belarus Inside Out is the name of a cross-boarder project we were involved since the summer of 2009. This is a result of work of young people from Belarus and many other European countries with Belarus being the main subject.
BIO project is exactly the result of such a “village” effect. Some people who happened to know each other and be involved in different online youth projects decided that it would be an interesting idea to get together, form groups which would include at the same time someone from Belarus and someone outside, assign each group a topic to research and make a magazine out of their reports.
The project took place thanks to the work of GenerationBY and a European youth online magazine Plotki.org. Via the wide network of connections the project united young photographers, journalists, writers and bloggers from Greece, the UK, Germany, France, Romania, Austria and Belarus.  After a seminar in Belarus where people got to know each other a bit better and discussed the topics which would be most interesting for the research, groups were formed and they set out for a one week research trip. And after a couple of months of writing, editing, translating, formatting and general stressing out – it was ready! A 96-page magazine was published with all the materials in English and excerpts in Belarusian! On top of that soon there will be a project web-page which will present the results in an interactive form. Until then you can download a pdf. version of the magazine.
Kathrin Janka from the Editorial Board in Berlin gives you a feeling of how it tastes:
Can exile really be hereditary? Would it be a good idea to turn Miensk into a museum of Soviet architecture? What is left of the huge swamp system that once covered a third of Belarus’ territory? What is the price of a free university education? Is the Belarusian village dying or being revived by young families moving to newly founded eco villages? What situation are female pensioners facing in Belarus today? Who are the young, well educated civil and cultural activists that form the face of this post-Soviet country – which, beyond, in spite of, political restriction? Is there such a thing as Belarusian identity today?
If you want to know the answers to these questions – check the pdf. file at bio.generation.by
Below are photos from the project presentation which took place in Berlin in February. Presentation in Belarus is planned for early autumn together with launching of the project web-page which will include full texts in both languages.

The Internet community in Belarus is quite big but still resembles a village where everyone knows everyone. People, who are active in by-net, live all around the world and often meet others who live in different countries. And that makes the network of interesting, creative, motivated and a bit crazy people even bigger. Which is great! Especially when one puts such a challenging goal in front of themselves as to turn a whole country inside-out, and uncover what is hidden under the layers of mass media stereotypes.

Belarus Inside Out is the name of a cross-boarder project we were involved since the summer of 2009. This is a result of work of young people from Belarus and many other European countries with Belarus being the main subject.

Continue reading…

02 Aug 2010

Hello again!

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Hello again!
It has been a while since we talked to you last time. Almost a year, actually! So now, when most people are hiding from the heat at home, there is finally time to get it all together and say “Hello!” to you again as well as give you a little update about what has been happening to us over the last year.
It might also be a good moment to finally explain who “we” are. Up until now Logbook was updated on behalf of “we” – GenerationBY team.  However, “we” is I, a 26-year old woman from Belarus who now lives in Vienna, Austria, and to prevent the confusion let’s keep it “I” from now on. Living abroad gives me an opportunity to look at what Belarus is like from the same perspective as you do – from outside. However, you can still treat what is written in this blog as insider perspective (leaving space for the unavoidable bias of personal opinions, of course) because all my posts are based on the work of a much bigger community of people who live in Belarus and have the chance to see everything with their own eyes and experience it by themselves. And as a result this team work is reflected in “we” that always pops up when the blog is being updated.
So now, when you know more about “us” ;), I can give you a short overview of our progress.
One of the news is that now you can follow GenerationBY both on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/pages/Generationby-Belaruskae-Gen-Y/177417226986?ref=ts) and Twitter (http://twitter.com/generationby). Our profiles in both social networks are mainly updated in Belarusian, but by following them you will be able to see interesting photo reports from various events as soon as they are posted at Generation.by; and will be able to get in touch with other people who “Like” us; and your presence will motivate us to be bilingual everywhere!
I did not mention the photo-blog without a reason. We have substantially developed it as an important part of the web-page. If something youth-related is happening in the country it is most likely that you will find a thorough photo report on Generation By. Photos are also posted in a larger format now, so you can enjoy the photo-reports better.
Even though this blog was not regularly updated we never lost touch with the readers and the static blog still served its goal – help people interested in Belarus from around the world to get in touch with the young Generation of Belarusians. Some people even managed to come to Belarus during this year and see everything with their own eyes. This kind of feedback is very important to us and motivates us to take more active approach to this blog.
2009 and 2010 brought GenerationBY a lot of valuable contacts both in Belarus and abroad. Most of these contacts resulted in good friendship and some of them – in successful projects (more details to come!). We are trying to use every opportunity to get to know people like you and spread the word. This year GenerationBY is accredited to cover Sziget festival in Budapest (August 10-16); and since there is a fairly big chance that we can meet you there we will keep our eyes open not to miss you in the crowd :) But just to be on the safe side – if you want to meet – send us an email in advance!
Until then and regardless – we will be in touch!

It has been a while since we talked to you last time. Almost a year, actually! So now, when most people are hiding from the heat at home, there is finally time to get it all together and say “Hello!” to you again as well as give you a little update about what has been happening to us over the last year.

It might also be a good moment to finally explain who “we” are. Up until now Logbook was updated on behalf of “we” – GenerationBY team.  However, in case of this blog “we” is actually I, a 26-year old woman from Belarus who now lives in Vienna, Austria, and to prevent the confusion let’s keep it “I” from now on. Living abroad gives me an opportunity to look at what Belarus is like from the same perspective as you do – from outside. However, you can still treat what is written in this blog as insider perspective (leaving space for the unavoidable bias of personal opinions, of course) because all my posts are based on the work of a much bigger community of people who live in Belarus and have the chance to see everything with their own eyes and experience it by themselves. And as a result this team work is reflected in “we” that always popped up when the blog was updated.

So now, when you know more about “us” ;), I can give you a short overview of our progress. Continue reading…