Those, who keep silent about evil, do evil themselves

Europe speaks about human rights violations in Africa, China and North Korea, but fails to notice the events nearby – in Belarus, Jan Skrob writes in Czech magazine Respekt.

Jan Skrob’s article is entitled “About Belarus and Indifference”. Here is the full text of the article:

A peaceful demonstration ageist the ruling regime was suppressed in Minsk on October 16. If you think it’s nothing special, you are right – this happens often in Belarus. Every time I visit the website svobodnebelorusko.cz (Free Belarus), I wonder why our mass media seem not to report about events in that country (at least, I don’t notice this). Many people don’t know at all that something is wrong in Belarus.

Alyaksandr Lukashenka has been ruling Belarus since 1994, the country is a splinter of the totalitarian Soviet Union and the only real dictatorship in Europe. while many people wear T-shirts FREE TIBET and speak about human rights violations regarding China, North Korea or dictatorial regimes in Africa, political arrests and persecution in the country, which is close to us geographically and culturally, don’t worry people.

The Belarusian language is suppressed on all level of the education system in favour of the Russian language. The historical state symbols are replaced by the symbols, created in early 1950ies for the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic. The opposition movement is being suffocated, though Lukashenka tries to pretend everything is democratic in the country – an opposition leader Alyaksandr Milinkevich ran in the last presidential elections (he gained 6% of the votes, according to the results of the voting, which were most likely rigged). I could write much about this and I would have been the first person to write about this in Czech. But I won’t do this.

The 16th day of every month is the unofficial Day of Solidarity with Belarus (The Solidarity Day in Belarus). At 8:00 p.m. (7:00 p.m. European time), people all over the world must turn of the light and put candles on window sills. Demonstrations against the current regime are usually held in Belarus on that day. The demonstration on October 16 was dispersed by soldiers and KGB officers in mufti. The demonstrators were beaten and arrested. The demonstration took only two minutes.

I don’t know how I should behave if I am told these events are not important for us and the things covered by our media are more important. If the world knew better about the situation in Belarus and spoke more about it, it would be not just moral support for the opposition, but could also influence the situation in the country. Once I saw a slogan “Those, who keep silence about evil, do evil themselves”. Maybe the motto overestimates, but it has the truth.