“Dear friends,
Thank you for the invitation to address the 34th Heidelberg Symposium. One of this year's topics is “What will be the legacy of our times?”
It is not an easy question, for sure. In my opinion, the legacy of our times must be courage. Because, if there won't be courage, there will be probably no legacy at all.
American historian Timothy Snyder wrote: “Democracy rests on the courage to tell the truth to power”.
This is exactly the courage I’m talking about. Indeed, in the time of fake news, disinformation and propaganda, it takes a lot of courage to tell the truth.
This courage is one of the main lessons of our Belarusian revolution, which started in 2020.
It is the courage of my husband Siarhei Tsikhanouski and other political activists who challenged the Lukashenka regime, telling the truth about its corrupt nature.
It is the courage of Belarusian voters, who sent photos of their ballots to the alternative vote-counting campaign Holas, thus uncovering the truth about the election.
It is the courage of Belarusian civil officials and military servicemen, who stepped down from their office to protest the government’s lies.
It is the courage of Nina Bahinskaya, an elderly woman, who was arrested many times for marching on the street with our white-red-white Belarusian flag, banned by the dictatorship as “extremist”.
It is the courage of Raman Bandarenka, a young man, who went out to defend the truth – a symbolic revolutionary art object by his house – and was beaten to death by the police.
It is the courage of a university teacher, who slapped in the face one of the Lukashenka’s professional TV-liars for his attempt to slander Raman Bandarenka’s mourners.
It is the courage of Mikalay Klimovich, who died in prison last week. He was one of thousands of our political prisoners. He was sentenced just for drawing a cartoon on Lukashenka. It cost him his life.
It is the courage of journalists Katsiaryna Andreeva and Darya Chultsova, who went on with their live stream reporting the truth about a police raid, even surrounded by them. Both were sentenced to prison for doing their job. Katsiaryna is still serving her 8 years and 3 months sentence.
It is the courage of Belarusian volunteers, who went to Ukraine to defend the country from Russian aggression. Many of them lost their lives in this fight for truth against the imperial lies about non-existence of the Ukrainian nation.
It is the courage of Belarusian partisans, who destroyed several relay cases on the railway to prevent Russian troops from marching on Kyiv. They showed the whole world the truth about Belarusians, who, in spite of all the efforts of the Lukashenka’s pro-Russian propaganda, are against this criminal war. They were sentenced to up to 23 years in prison. Some of them were badly wounded when detained by the special forces.
And of course, it is the courage of the entire Ukrainian nation which stood up against the bloodthirsty empire.
It takes courage to tell the truth in the age of lies. To call things by their true names: like calling a war a war; an occupation, an occupation. It takes courage to remain human in times of inhumanity.
It takes courage to recognize our mistakes and accept our responsibility. It takes courage to go on fighting for the right cause in spite of these mistakes.
It takes courage to act when action is needed. It takes courage not to soothe oneself with illusions, like the illusion that the monster can be appeased.
Democracy makes no sense without courage to tell the truth and to defend the truth. If there's no courage, democracy is doomed. In this case, it will be soon replaced with a manipulative tyranny. If democracy is to be our legacy to the future, we need a lot of courage to fight for democracy.
With this, I greet all the participants of the 34th Heidelberg Symposium and I wish you to stay courageous when it comes to action.
Thank you”.
