Paul
Goble
Staunton, April 7 – The outrage
Belarusians feel about Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s decision to demolish the crosses
at Kuropaty may be somewhat difficult for people beyond the republic to
understand, but ever more comments show that he has destroyed any hope that he
and the Belarusian people can ever come back together.
Below are selections of some of the
comments that Belarusians are making about this horrific act, comments that suggest
this is one of those unexpected actions that will continue to resonate among
the people and do more to mobilize the population against Lukashenka and his
authoritarian regime than anything that he has done up to now.
‘At Kuropaty, Lukashenka has shot himself
not in the foot but in the head,’ Yevgeny Afnagel of the Belarusian National
Congress says because “respect for funerals and graves is a very deep quality
of the Belarusian mentality, which has been formed over millennia. Hundreds of
thousands of residents of the country, including those far from religion, honor
the memory of their ancestor” (charter97.org/ru/news/2019/4/7/329647/).
“The
Lukashenka regime is consistently destroying our country,” Afnagel says. “First
he tried to do this quickly; then, in the second half of the 1990s, the heroic
struggle of Belarusians did not allow him to achieve his goal and surrender
independence. After this, he began to take away all that is dear to us.”
He continues: “History was falsified,
education and culture were destroyed,” and the opposition attacked. “Now, at Kuropaty, [Lukashenka] has begun a
battle with fundamental values whose destruction as a rule means that the people
as a rule will quickly disappear, with its faith, memory and traditions.”
“If we cannot defend them, we will
lose Belarus,” the activist says.
Sergey Naumchik, a Belarusian
activist, is even more blunt. He suggests that the Kuropaty vandalism is “Lukashenka’s
fatal mistake.” It destroys his desired image far more than anything he has
done in the last 25 years because it touches on something “very deep” for
Belarusians, not Kuropaty but “crosses” (charter97.org/ru/news/2019/4/7/329649/).
Vyachaslau Barok, a Belarusian priest, suggests that the
best way to understand what the Kuropaty vandalism means is that it will lead
to a revolution: “Ukraine had a Maidan; we have Kuropaty” (charter97.org/ru/news/2019/4/6/329626/).
And Irina Khalip, a close observer
of the Belarusian scene for Moscow’s Novaya
gazeta, says that “what has taken place in Kuropaty is not vandalism: it is
a state violation of the nerve connections” of Belarusians. No medicine is
going to prove capable of curing this kind of wound (novayagazeta.ru/articles/2019/04/06/80116-kresta-na-nih-net).
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