The Ministry of Education and the General Prosecutor’s Office in Minsk presented new school textbooks “The Genocide of the Belarusian People during the Great Patriotic War”. From now on, children of all grades will be taught a new version of history.
Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya: “The genocide of the Belarusian people did not end in 1940s, it is ongoing.
It is ongoing in prisons, where political prisoners are deprived of assistance, medication, and basic necessities, which dooms them to a slow death. It is ongoing in the police departments, where people are made to give testimony by force and confess to crimes on video. It is ongoing in schools and universities, where people in uniforms bring ideology to replace education – and deprive young people of opportunities for attempting to go against the system.
Organizations like the GUBAZiK or riot police, which, it would seem, should protect Belarusians, are in fact conducting one massive reprisal raid. And the regime’s ideologists are in fact mercilessly destroying our national identity.
The regime’s textbooks, written exactly as told by propagandists and security forces, do not tell our children the truth. They do not talk about how Lukashenka has been eliminating his opponents for years. They do not talk about how the regime imprisons thousands of Belarusians to eradicate any dissent. They do not talk about how the regime has rewritten our history multiple times, banned any mention of our heroes, and labeled the best works of Belarusian authors as “extremist materials”.
For years, Lukashenka has betrayed his own citizens and his country to cling on to power. But despite years of propaganda, we, Belarusians, know the truth. We know our history and remember our heroes. And our priority now is not to let propaganda penetrate the minds of our children”.
