Viktar Ivashekvich: “Period of suffocating dictatorship may end”

Dzyady memorial action, dedicated to the Day of Commemoration of Ancestors, takes place in Minsk on November 2. “The action of this year is remarkable because 20 years ago Dzyady started the Belarusian democratic movement, which began open struggle for freedom,” Viktar Ivashkevich, deputy head of the Belarusian Popular Front party, said.

“After three years, Belarus became independent, the communistic party was forbidden, the Front was registered, and national white-red-white flag was waving above the House of Government. In 1988 nobody could imagine this. But we had a hope that we were moving forward the national, cultural, democratic revival,” the politician reminds in an interview to the Charter’97 press center.

In Ivashkevich’s view, today, 20 years later, the situation in Belarus is not less difficult, but everything may change, if people are able to overcome fear and speak out the right for free and worthy life.

“We haven’t been carrying a white-red-white flag for these 20 years. A new period of rise is coming. A period of suffocating dictatorship may end. It depends on us. On November 2, all of us should take part in Dzyady rally, an action, important for the history of the country, for all of us. We should take national white-red-white flags and demonstrate by this sea of national flags that the democratic and European Belarus has future. Participating in this action is contribution to the future of the country, it is a message to the Belarusian and international community, promising that Belarus will be free, democratic and European,” the politician believes.

On October 31, ahead of the action, Viktar Ivashkevich and other BPF leaders Alyaksei Yanukevich and Yury Hunarevich came to the main entrance to the Belarusian State University and distributed leaflets, calling to attend a rally on November 2, among students and tutors of the university.

“I’d like to tell to all young people – tear away from computers, take a national flag and go to the rally. You will see that it is more pleasant to feel you are involved in historical events than just watching at them,” Ivashkevich said.

Dzyady memorial rally, dedicated to the Day of Commemoration of Ancestors, will begin at 12.00 noon November 2 with laying flowers to graves of famous Belarusian public figures at the Uskhodniya Cemetery of Minsk. Then people will march along Independence Avenue, Kalinouski Street and Lahoiski Trakt to Kurapaty memorial area, where a meeting will take place.