Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya: “Thanks to the regime’s officials, late spring was hell for school graduates. In an online chat with thousands of participants, many talked about leaving the country. People have been leaving for many years. Studying abroad is normal. What's abnormal is when it becomes a one-way trip.
Previously, what stopped young Belarusians from going back home was the standard of living or their ties to the new place. Now reasons are different: young men can’t return due to the threat of being conscripted as studying abroad is no longer a reason for draft determent. Both men and women face a long check at the border and arrest if the police find photos from protests on their phones. And in general, it can’t be safe to go to a dictatorship that trains troops for war and welcomes nuclear warheads.
In addition to collaboration with Russian universities, Belarusian higher education establishments are going to train professionals for Zimbabwe – another dictatorship, but in Africa. It wasn't long ago that students could go on exchange programs to almost any country, but Belarus abandoned a pro-European path in education. The regime officials rebuffed the Bologna Process and opted for Zimbabwe instead of Harvard, Cambridge, and Yale.
While the regime keeps on creating barriers to education and hunting for dissidents, thousands of young people make plans to leave the country, perhaps without realizing yet that they will leave forever. They don't see the alternatives that must be around. The government could support the country's top graduates in their studies at prestigious universities worldwide, develop high-level education with international exchange opportunities, maintain student self-governance, and abandon mandatory post-graduation job assignments. It does not.
Providing quality higher education at home, on par with the world's best universities, is not something unattainable. These are basic common-sense things that our Belarusian universities should have. Our children should be confident in their future and feel that the country supports them, not exploits them. Only then will they plan their future at home, not abroad”.
