Times Change

It is important to overcome laziness and indifference, and to step up.

Dmitry Polienko was found guilty on Wednesday and today Edward Palchis will be tried. If now, according to many people in Belarus and the West, repressions have become a story, how can so many trials be explained this beautiful golden autumn?

"Of course, Palchis will be released, I heard it so many times. - As well as Polienko was. Well, people are not arrested even for a few days."

But before Polienko was released, he had spent five months in jail. And he was constantly taken from one place to another. Who once was in jail knows how it is hard. And police representatives visited and intimidated him. and now he is not at large, but under control of the Corrective Service and he will serve a two-year suspended sentence. And who knows what will happen in the country in two years? And who will dare say that two years in jail after suspension do not turn into a real deprivation of freedom? I'm sorry, but after events of December in 2010 it is senseless and even silly to give predictions.

As for Edward Palchis, who, they say, will soon be released, please recall that he was detained more than ten months ago. He spent a months in a mental hospital to be examined, then recognizance not to leave, escape, arrest in Russia, Bryansk remand prison, extradition, Zhodzina remand prison. He spent 18 months in prisons, mental hospitals, on the run. The trial will not be public, neither relatives nor journalists and civil rights activists are welcomed. Well, sure, he'll be released. But he will be recognized guilty and convicted, anyway. And his "award" is unknown.

We got used to "awards" and have become hardhearted. And we learned to express our thoughts in a Putin-like way, "dvushechka" (two-years of imprisonment). Well, you're alive, say "thank you"! What repressions do you mean, guys? One, two years in jail... This is a bullshit compared to the world revolution. And it even does not make sense to talk about if a person was released in a courtroom.

This is a bad habit, when you start to perceive "dvushechka" as something normal, while the question of innocence disappears from use. This habit is easily adopted by the world: just recall, Yury Rubtsou was the last prisoner of conscience recognized by the Amnesty International. Neither Polienko nor Palchis are recognized as prisoners of conscience. No wonder that exalted Russian woman Maria Rymar, who - this week - has been fined for a joke about trotyl. She said that, according to the Belarusian colleagues - human rights activists, amid the situation with the Belarusian justice she ought to say thank you to a judge .

This is the way we ride. First, we rejoice at release after the remand prison, a suspended sentence, a fine. The next step is to say "thank you, I'm alive" And to recognize their right to arbitrariness, lawlessness constitutionally not to bother them with complaints. Do you need a prompt or can you come up with a thing that follows on your own? That's right, a special troika accompanied by our indifferent reasoning on "times have changed, now no one is put in jail."

We remember how easily times can change in five minutes. Or rather, they do not change, but we are. We have had the same period for twenty two years. And we do change, get accustomed to, become lazy and apathetic. This is not the worst thing we've witnessed. Soon we start talking like veterans: "Is this a challenge? Once upon a time, during the war..." Well, this is a heaven if to compare to the trenches, battalions and detachments. And compared to a normal human life this is a poor existence. Later, maybe, one will want to escape a sheepfold, but laziness will bother.

But there is a way out. Come to court to support Edward Palchis at least for five minutes. Write a letter to Mikhail Zhemchuzhny. Take an urban quest after work, find Dashkevich and sign under petition for return of the national flag. Participate in a picket against the death penalty. If you press "like", this is great of course. But it does not make any sense if it is not proved in a real life. You can make at least a few steps towards a court building, and from your home to a mailbox. If you're too lazy, then consider it a mental fitness.

Iryna Khalip, especially for charter97.org