The first shock of the new reality in Belarus has started to wear out and people are starting to collect their thought together about how to live in this country now. GenerationBY team member is sharing his memories of the protest in Minsk on December 19, 2010.
Crowds of relatives and friends of the arrested waiting outside of Zhodina prison to pass them the necessities
“Happy Christmas? Not for Belarus”, – that is how Guardian’s journalist started his article about what happened in Belarus last week. And Belarusians did really forget about Christmas. It is impossible to enjoy the holidays at the same time when dozens of your friends are in jail. People are joking that the best of Belarusians have been jailed. Below is my personal recollection of those beautiful and at the same time disgusting hours of December protests in Minsk. Continue reading…
December 19th, 2010, will remain in history as a day when “Last Dictatorship in Europe” seized to be just an expression once dropped by american diplomats. The regime showed its true face. It is clear that it will take more than a peaceful protest for a change because those in power will not be ashamed to use all methods to keep it.
Late at night between 19th and 20th, Aliaksandar Zimouski, the head of the state TV (who was taken off this position as of today), commenting the clashes at the Square of Independece said: “Now it is very important not to let the opposition make the picture work for them”. And that is exactly what the state media have been doing since then – presenting their own picture of the events to the people who live outside of Minsk and do not have access to alternative media. The ideologically correct picture was conveyed via discussions on talk shows showing videos with “violent protesters” , airing videos with some participants (including few former candidates) in which they condemn the protests and blaming some of the candidates for the violence; showing fake shots with bats, metal sticks and Molotov cocktails supposedly brought by the violent crowd of youngsters. At first even some foreign media were reporting about crashes started by the protesters even though it was a clear provocation from the side of special services.
By now one can find quite a lot of material both on YouTube and on major international websites about what happened. Still, we decided to put here a chronological description of some major events that happened since December 19th. Continue reading…
This blog was created to promote Belarus from different sides, with the intention to overcome the stereotype that there is only “the dictatorship side”. Unfortunately, sad news demand writing an article offering other than positive news.
A week ago human rights activist Yana Paliakova committed suicide after the Salihorsk court sentenced her to two years of freedom limitation with compulsory work. There is no clear version why and how did she do that, but the most accepted opinion is that she could not bare the oppression from the side of local police and KGB which included frequent arrests, physical violence and threatening. The announcement of the sentence last week seemed to be the last drop, because she kept repeating “i am not going to be a prisoner”.
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Internet traffic often resembles the traffic on the roads. At least that is exactly what happened in Belarus on January 10th. That day there were traffic jams both in the streets and in the Internet. The streets in Minsk where blocked by protesting small businesses owners and employees. And at the same time somebody blocked the “roads” to a number of most popular information resources in the Internet, namely www.charter97.org, www.belaruspartisan.org and web-site of the Belarusian Service of Radio Liberty www.svaboda.org. Belarusian users also could not access blog-platform Livejournal.com during several hours on that day.
Continue reading…
