Belarus’ Freedom Day is celebrated in New York, Berlin, Brussels, London and Rome
3- 25.03.2009, 16:07
Events dedicated to Freedom Day and staged by the Belarusian expat community abroad are held over a few weeks. Events are held on week-ends before and after March 25, as this year the holiday coincides with a working day.
On the weekend before the holiday, on March 22, festive events were held in the United States by the Belarusian youth movement in the US. A newly founded Belarusian student’s community founded in Rome paid tribute to the memory of Belarusians who died in the Battle of Monte Cassino in 1944, Radio Svaboda infroms.
In London a prayer service and celebration is to take place on Saturday 26 in Francis Skaryna Library. On March 29 festive events of the Belarusian-American Association of the US and Canada in Toronto will take place. Belarusians of Quebec and Ottawa plan to celebrate on April 4 and 5.
On March 25 Belarusian festive events are to take place in the US, Germany, Belgium, France, Poland, Lithuania and Estonia.
Meetings and festive marches are planned in New York, Berlin, Brussels; festive prayer services in intention for Belarus are to take place in Vilnius, Antwerp and Rome. Laying of flowers to the monument of the Belarusian People’s Republic’s fathers in Rasos Cemetery in Vilnius is planned, and a premier concert headed by Kiryla Nasaeu in the Academy of Music and Theatre.
Freedom Day units Belarusians
Joint projects in this or that way united by the idea of Freedom Day, unite the Belarusian expat community. Belarusian organisations abroad cooperate, and the results of their work are evident.
Among the events dedicated to the holiday, Freedom Day in the US, are the Belarusian exhibition “Art against Dictatorship”, a joint initiative of Belarusians of Europe and the US together with artists and activists from Belarus, which have been demonstrated in several countries.
The idea appeared at the Congress of the new Diaspora in Tallinn last March, and according to the conception, the exhibition started its traveling around continents. It consists of 30 works of Belarusian artists and sculptors and is meant to be a travelling exhibition. The exhibition which was presented in Estonian parliament, and would be also demonstrated in other parliaments of Europe, is in the US now.
In February a gala opening of an exposition took place in Washington, in headquarters of Marshall Foundation. Representatives of 13 diplomatic missions accredited in the US, as well as representatives of the Belarusian People’s Republic’s Rada and Belarusians of the US and Canada were attending the event.
On March 22 the exhibition opened in New York, in Belarusian Museum in Brooklyn. After that the exposition is to be displayed in Washington again.
The exhibition is one of the results of joining forces by youth activists of the US from the Belarusian youth movement of America and from Estonia, coordinators of the Third Way organisation living abroad, political refugees who initiated a Congress of the new expat community. Besides, they recently founded an Estonian organisation “Valgevene Uus Tee” (“New way for Belarus”) together with local Belarusians.
