Mustafa Nayyem: I’ll never forget what I saw in Minsk streets

A well-known journalist and a deputy of the Supreme Rada reminded Ukrainians about the events of December 19, 2010 in Minsk.

Mustafa Nayyem (Nayem), a Ukrainian journalist, whose Facebook post exactly a year ago started Euromaidan, stated that he didn’t want a repetition of the events in Minsk in 2010.

“We could lose a generation and the future,” he explained on his Facebook page on November 21. “I will never forget what I saw in the streets of Minsk in 2010: riot policemen, who had gone berserk, crushed teeth, hundreds of imprisoned and thousands languishing in prison cells over the last 20 years. That’s what they had been planning for us.”

On November 21, 2013 the government of Ukraine stated that in the interests of the national security they would not sign the EU Association agreement, and would reorient to the Customs Union. On the same day Nayyem wrote on Facebook: “Let’s meet at 10:30 p.m. in front of Independence monument. Put on warm clothes, take your umbrellas, tea, coffee, good mood and friends. Reposts are extremely welcomed!”

The rally’s participants were not numerous, however, later it turned into a mass protest, primarily in central and western Ukraine. In February 2014 the regime of Viktor Yanukovych collapsed. It cost about 100 protesters’ lives. They were called “The Heavenly Hundred of Euromaidan”, BelaPAN reminds. A 25-year-old native of Homel (Belarus), Mikhail Zhyzneuski, who died on January 22, was among them. Right after the escape of Yanukovych to Russia, the Kremlin started a special operation in Crimea, as a result of which the entire peninsula was annexed by Russia in a result of a hurryingly organized referendum, which was not recognized by the world community. After that tensions in Donbas increased, and they turned into a large-scale war. Moscow recognized presence of its military men in staging the referendum in Crimea, refuses to admit they provide troops and armaments to separatists.

“I am often asked whether I would have written the same post again, knowing what it would result in. Yes, I would have written it,” Nayyem claims. “That’s because today I am even more convinced that in case we hadn’t taken to the streets on that chilly, rainy evening, there would be even more killed, injured and lost fates.”

“We have lost many pure souls of those who could be justly called heroes… It was not simply a struggle against “aliens”, it was a struggle against one’s own fear in front of those who are stronger. We have managed to do what is still cannot be done by generations in Russia and Belarus – we infected the authorities by the fear of the society, and not vice versa,” the Ukrainian journalist, who was elected a MP of the Supreme Rada in the early parliamentary election of October 26, stressed.