Authorities offer EHU to return back to Belarus

The European Humanities university which had to move to Lithuania after being closed by the Belarusian regime, has been offered to return to Belarus.

The Charter’97 press-centre has been informed about that by a well-known Belarusian playwright, the head of the Free Theatre Nikolay Khalezin. As said by him, he has learnt about that from the staff of the EHU.

“I has learnt about that from the university workers, and as far as I understand, it is one of the steps of Lukashenka’s administration I attracting investments and loans of the IMF. As the university in exile had a negative impact on the reputation of the regime, I think it is one of the parts of Lord Bell plan. It is a decorative surgery for improving the appearance of the authoritarian regime. The EHU becomes its bargaining chip. It could be expected that rector Mikhajlau will take this proposal gladly. And after a while Mikhajlau is to pay for that,” Nikolay Khalezin said to the Charter’97 press-centre.

According to the playwright, the return of the university to Belarus is not a sign of the Belarusian regime’s liberalization.

“In reality, the whole system of education should be liberated from political pressure. Only then it would be possible to say that the regime is changing in its essence. Other issues for liberalization should be fulfilled simultaneously: freedom of expression, freedom of elections and freedom of gatherings. Before it happens, it is too early to say about the regime’s transformation,” Nikolay Khalezin is convinced.

As we have informed, in the resolution on situation in Belarus after the “parliamentary elections” adopted by the European parliament on October 9, the question of the European Humanities University closed by the regime on political reasons in Minsk and which works in Vilnius now, is enumerated as the 14th question.

This year the EHU celebrates its 15th anniversary. After the EHU was closed in Minsk in 2004, the university restarted its work in Vilnius as an officially registered Lithuanian university, which diplomas are recognized in the EU. Every year more than 1,500 persons study in the university, about a half of them get education via the internet, in the framework of distance education programmes.

In the adopted resolution it is noted that members of the European parliament welcome “financial support of the European Commission to the European Humanities University in exile”, and offer the European structures to “urge the government of Belarus as a sign of good will and positive changes in the country to give the EHU a possibility to return to Belarus on legal grounds and to start its work again in the conditions which would allow its further development in Minsk”.