“Your Excellency, the Speaker of the Senate, Milos Strurchill,
Dear gentlemen, dear friends!
First of all, I would like to thank Mr. Stark and the distinguished members of the Senate for this invitation. I am sincerely grateful for the opportunity to address you on behalf of the Belarusian people at a time when they are experiencing one of the most important and difficult moments of their history.
This complex Belarusian history is very similar to that of the Czech Republic, and the ties between our countries date back several centuries. Belarusians well remember that here in Prague, more than half a thousand years ago the humanist Francis Skorina printed his first Bible. In the preface to it he wrote in the Old Obelisk language that all people are «favorable» to the place where they were born. But to love your homeland is to take responsibility for it. And the drama of Belarusians and Czechs for a long time was that they could not freely rule their own land.
Finally, 100 years ago, our peoples simultaneously proclaimed their independence, but their future has been shaped differently. Belarus was not kept as an independent State and was forcibly incorporated into the Soviet Union. But the democratic Belarusian authorities continued their work abroad, including in the Czech Republic, which welcomed them. Yesterday we commemorated the Presidents of the People’s Republic of Belarus in the Olshan Cemetery. They were people who worked their whole lives for Belarus and hoped to see it independent again. Unfortunately, they could not live to see that day.
But even then we saw that an independent country does not necessarily mean a free country. An independent country can also become incapable of freedom if the law and human dignity are disregarded. Therefore, the struggle continues, and now we have a great chance to finally realize the dream of a free, democratic Belarus — one that inspired the generations of our predecessors.
All last year Belarusians experienced and created the historical events themselves, when in one day more takes place than usual in a whole decade. I think the Czech people know this feeling well from their 1968 history. Thus, a year ago the dictatorship of Alexander Lukashenka finally gave up concern for the life and health of people and left them alone with the coronavirus. But instead of being confused, the Belarusians organized themselves and began to help doctors and each other. The people felt strong and united to defend their rights, including the right to vote. Because a man is free when he has a voice. Independent candidates, including my husband Siarhei, were detained and thrown in jail. But the Belarusians voted for a new leader of the country.
The regime responded with terror that our country has not seen since Stalin. But Belarus insists on democratic elections, and our peaceful protests have lasted for more than 300 days. In that time, there has not been a day without street demonstrations, even in winter frosts. But there has also been no day without arrests and violence by the regime – tens of thousands of people have gone through prisons, thousands are now.
Ten months the past struggles with the future, ten months the power tries to wage war against the people, ten months the Belarusians do not give up and go forward.
Some joked with sadness that if Kafka lived in our time, he would stop writing because he could not think of anything more absurd than the courts in Belarus. When laws no longer apply in the country, it is presumed normal that people are imprisoned for half a month for the color of their pants and nails. Solidarity becomes a crime. And witnesses in the courts are masked militiamen speaking through Zoom.
Writers will have to think for a long time how this became possible, but it is a reality, not literature, and already now lawlessness in Belarus has irrevocable victims. Just a week ago, an 18-year-old orphan, Dmitry Stakhovsky, committed suicide after endless pressure from investigators, who brought criminal charges against him for participating in peace marches. And last Monday, political prisoner Stepan Latypov attempted suicide in court after he was threatened with torture by his relatives. Earlier self-immolation took place in front of the police building in Smolevichi and in front of the Government House in the main square of Minsk.
I was remembering all these people in front of the monument to Jan Palach, who also had to choose an extreme form of protest and committed suicide in the centre of Prague. How do you resist despair when people lose hope? How do you prevent other tragedies like this? What can each of us do? These are the questions that now arise for the Belarusians and the answers must be found immediately.
This is all the more urgent since in recent weeks the crisis in Belarus has evolved from an internal problem to a challenge for the whole of Europe and the international community. When the Lukashenka regime hoisted a fighter jet to land the Athens-Vilnius plane and to detain the journalist Raman Pratasevich, he did nothing extraordinary to himself – it is the same as what is always done against the Belarusians. But this time they were not going to shoot peaceful demonstrators, but more than a hundred foreign nationals, including children. All this is for the arrest of a young man who received a 2017 Vaclav Havel Scholarship for his journalistic activities. What the regime in Belarus considered to be journalism, however, were confessions made on video after torture. It has a name – terrorism – and now the whole world is becoming aware of the terrorist nature of the Lukashenka dictatorship. If civilized countries do not accept that a nine-million-dollar country in the heart of Europe is controlled by terrorists, they have many tools to stop them. Combined with internal pressure on a regime that Belarusians do not stop for a day, external pressure can drastically change the situation and prevent new victims.
Dear Sirs,
Two things come immediately to me that should resonate in the historical memory of the Czech people. The first was a document prepared by the Soviet government in 1968, which claimed that the Czech leaders themselves «invited» the forces of the Warsaw Pact to enter Czechoslovakia. Today the Lukashenka regime also claims that the pilot of the Ryanair aircraft has asked to land in Minsk.
And the second is the return of Western leaders from Munich in 1938, when they announced the «historic treaty», when Czechoslovakia was actually sacrificed to the dictatorship. Today I fear that the freedom and democratic aspirations of the Belarusian people would not have been sacrificed for the sake of «appeasement» of the dictator. I fear they were not sacrificed in order to «leave the channels for dialogue open».
That is why I call on the Czech Republic to take a consistent position against the illegitimate Lukashenka regime, not to recognize its authority and to regard all its decisions and arrangements as illegitimate.
I call for the criminalization of organizations, including the KGB, the OMON and the GUBUPiK, that terrorize the population. I call on the Czech Republic to bring cases against criminals under universal jurisdiction. I call for the establishment of an International Tribunal to investigate the past and post-2020 crimes of the Lukashenka dictatorship.
I call for the organization of a high-level international conference on Belarus' recovery from the crisis. I recall that the only possible way out of the crisis in Belarus is through free elections under international supervision.
I call on the Czech Republic to increase its support for the projects of Belarusian civil society – journalists, students and doctors — as this is now extremely valuable. It is important to support local communities, strike committees and initiatives that have emerged since August 2020. Focus on the safety of activists and journalists. It is very important to support traditional and new media such as Euroradio, Belsat, Radio Svoboda, Youtube bloggers, telegram channels and print projects.
I call for the expansion of programmes to support the wounded, the families of the repressed and the students. The new Belarus would require highly qualified personnel, and Czech universities could increase the number of scholarships for Belarusian youth. To support artistic, musical and publishing projects that promote Czech-Belarusian understanding.
I call on the Czech Republic and the European Union to adopt the fourth set of economic sanctions and to initiate the fifth. The list should include regime aides, judges, prosecutors, law enforcement officers and businessmen. I call on the Czech Republic and the European Union to stop trade in petroleum products and fertilizers with an illegitimate regime. I call for a halt to investments and loans to Belarusian State-owned companies and banks, which are essentially the source of income for the dictatorship.
The Czech Republic has a long tradition of supporting Belarusians fighting for freedom — from the twentieth years of the last century until the twentieth years of our century. In a recent meeting with the widow of President Havel Dagmar Havlova, I had the opportunity to thank him for his solidarity and to remind him that President Havel had written the last letter of his life to Belarusian political prisoners. Belarusian editorial office Radio Svoboda is still working in Prague, and Czech doctors from MEDEVAC rescued many of those who were crippled in the worst days of August. I sincerely thank all Czechs of good will from Brno to Plzeni, from Liberca to Budejevyca, all our assistants in every municipality, theater, university who help the Belarusians in their struggle. The day before yesterday I saw hundreds of Belarusians and Czechs in the Old Town Square, their solidarity gives me and thousands of Belarusians new strength and gives us confidence that our struggle is a question of winners.
I mentioned the name of the beautiful Czech capital, Prague. To me it seems symbolic because in Belarusian the word «prague» means a deep desire, a need. That word is particularly relevant to our people, who have a genuine desire for justice, a thirst for truth, a thirst for freedom. The desire for justice was the leitmotif of the defenders of Czech democracy Václav Havel and Jan Sokol.
Thanks to progress in human rights, dictators can no longer do what they want. They have to hide even more carefully what they have done and are doing. And that the most successful of them are beginning to accept that they will one day be brought to justice. But even the most advanced can no longer be sure that they will «write history».
It’s a quote from an essay by Jan Sokol that the Czech Republic recently lost.
We cannot allow dictators to write history. Because history — and the future — belongs to us, to people with a real thirst. The thirst for freedom.
Thank you”.
