Paddy Wagon for the Innocents

We like to take a walk in Gorky Park with my one-tear-old son Daniil. And Lukashenka hates it when we walk in the park. Nothing personal, however: his attitude to other mothers with toddlers is the same. Ten days ago, on Saturday, the park was filled with children and parents. Merry-go-rounds, candy floss, little cars for rent, sandpits and slides are simple pleasures of our children, who do not know still where they live, a journalist Iryna Khalip writes.

But we, with out balloons and penny whistles, were out of place in a children’s park. We were spoiling Lukashenka’s fun, who wanted to enjoy watching a hockey in a covered skating rink.

I do not know, we he playing alone, or with a dog as always. And I missed the moment when he arrived to the park. I met friends and stopped to chat. And my father, who joined us, took the grandson about to stroll on the grass. When I said say goodbye to my friends and hurried after family, a riot policeman emerge in the alley in front of me and told me to go back.

“But my child is there!” I tried to explain.

“Go!” the riot policeman pushed me. “The president plays hockey here, you shouldn’t be here with your child!”

I resented. The riot policeman signed: “If you do not want to go away willingly, I will call up an officer, and you will explain everything to him”. And he said to walkie-talkie: “A woman crossed a child; she is trying to get through to him!” And a commander’s voice was heard from the walkie-talkie: “Stop her! I am running!”

Certainly, I understand that a woman who is yearning to see her child is a dangerous creature. There is no stopping her. And at once an unpresentable officer came running up. He started to demand me to leave the “secure facility” immediately.

--Since when Gorky Park has become a secure facility? – I wondered, thinking I might have missed some important news.

-- Since an event requiring security measures is held here! – the officer rapped out.

-- And since when it is held?

-- Since the president has arrived to play hockey here!

I do not want to go into much detail. It looked like we were pushed out of the park by all ranks. Other enraged mammies who were wheeling baby carriages and strollers out of the park, exchanged comments like: “Now I believe all kind of stories”…

By the way, toddlers are not afraid of riot policemen, and they stare at them with the same sincere and fearless curiosity, as they look at caterpillars in the grass. They are just an element of world for children they try to cognize.

Since then we do not go to the park on weekends. Monday, 4 p.m. looks like a pretty quiet time. Only pregnant ladies with children usually go for a walk there in this time. This Monday I wheeled the baby carriage into the park, and I thought that we had arrived to celebration of Freedom Day, or to a European March. A shiny paddy wagon was standing in the central alley of the park. It is not clear, was it intended for mothers or children. But a baby carriage could be placed there easily.

Guard of the ruler is progressing in front of our very eyes. I think next time a fighter aircraft will fly at low level over the park, snipers will be sitting in sandpits, and undercover agents whose goal is to be lost among the crowd, will put on boonie hats, and perch on wooden hobbyhorses on the merry-go-round…

The paddy wagon blocked the way to the rental of little cars for children. However, there were no people who wanted to take a car. Riot policemen encircled the covered skating rink. It was a middle of a working day, and Lukashenka was playing hockey serenely.

I can understand everything. Unlike other people, he doesn’t have to work; he possesses everything he needs already. He can live a life of an aristocrat, an idler who plays golf day and night (a golf-club is used there, so the games are almost similar). But why a show is made of that, demonstrating he doesn’t work, and dedicates time to pleasure only? If there were no paddy wagon and riot policemen, who push away every mother with a child, nobody would guess Lukashenka plays hockey here. And none of the families strolling there will enter the ugly building of the skating rink. Balloons and ice-cream are not sold there. Monstrous milk cans that symbolize native hockey team’s cups, are presented like in a shop window, and can be seen from a distance. To shoo away mothers with children from a park means to say urbi et orbi something like: “Yes, that’s the way I am! I am even nastier than you could imagine, and I like it!”

But it would be too easy to attribute it to political exhibitionism. Riot policemen and paddy wagons create an illusion for Lukashenka he is protected from an attack. Judging by the social makeup of people walking in the park, he is protected from an attack by people in baby carriages. It’s hard to explain the nature of this fear of children. Alyaksandr Lukashenka could have been possibly told about indigo children who have unbelievable abilities, and he imagined them making sniper rifles sitting in their baby carriages; then trigger aimed fire. May be. But it is most likely that looking through an armoured glass at them, Lukashenka, who has foretold measured out a life term to himself (a Freudian slip), thinks with terror that they are “the young street mobsters” who are “to sweep him away from the face of the earth”. And he prefers to keep away from these “mobsters”.

Please do not worry, mister Lukashenka. Hide your riot police and paddy wagons. These children do not pose any threat for you. Everything will be over for you well before they grow up.