16 Mar 2009

About Dictatorship, Suicide and Propaganda

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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14 Jan 2008

“Traffic Jams”: Belarusian Style

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.

protesters blocking the street

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