Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya: “The regime continues to pull Belarus into the past. Another official proposed an "innovation" in education: drafting students to the army during their studies, as was done in the Soviet Union. This is the only way the old men raised under the Soviet system see the country – as one not respecting an individual, disregarding personal freedom, and seeking to suppress any individuality, including through military service.
Now the military believes they can tell Belarusians what education should be like and everyone will just gladly accept it. But what do the students themselves think of such innovations? Yesterday I read a great piece on their opinions by Zerkalo.io:
– "I don't want to lose a whole year".
– "It's just a wasted time. Mandatory service does not produce trained and prepared soldiers. This is probably done to make young people apathetic and poison them with propaganda".
– "Mandatory conscription is insanity, which will make people mentally unstable".
All these propagandists, ideologues, and other people in uniform do not realize that young Belarusians consider the army pointless and mandatory service a relic of the past. Fans of the Soviet Union really think that "if you haven't been in the army, you're not a man" and "girls will like you more after the army". But it's not the 1970s anymore.
Such innovations will push Belarus further back in progress. Young people will lose their desire to acquire knowledge for their profession in their own country. After all, potential students will prefer to choose a university in a country that will not force them to sweep the training yards or build houses for generals in their second or third year of studies. Belarus is a country with huge potential, which deserves not to fall into the abyss of a dark past, but to build a European future. After all, as the head of the Polish Foreign Ministry, Zbigniew Rau, said, Belarusians belong to the common European home. And they will be a part of it – as soon as laws in Belarus serve all 9 million Belarusians, not just one person”.
