Sannikov is our President

Let us finally be outspoken: Lukashenka has not been the president of Belarus for a long time now; he is a usurper who cowardly destroys his strongest competitors with the help of his executioners.

On December 19, 2010, the Belarusian dictatorship shocked the entire world. On that day, the national protest rally against the falsified results of the election was violently suppressed and most of the presidential candidates were arrested.

According to some unofficial sources among the authorities, including the KGB, Lukashenka’s inexplicable violence shown on that day was triggered by the actual results of the voting, not substituted with Yarmoshyna’s scribbles. The real voting results mean that Lukashenka who has been ruling Belarus for the last 17 years has lost. Moreover, the lowest and most shameful percentage of votes he got in Minsk. If these numbers had been made public, the second round of election would undoubtedly have been won by a democratic candidate, and we would have had a completely different country.

Recently, when on the Russian television Lukashenka was compared to Stalin, Stanislau Shushkevich remarked that Stalin had both animal instinct and intellect, while Lukashenka has only animal instinct.

Overfilled with frenzy, Lukashenka couldn’t breathe during the entire election campaign, when in order to get foreign loans he had to “slacken the reins of government” a little bit. The “ungrateful” people, however, sensing freedom, first hurried to give their signatures for the democratic candidates, and then to state their position on the square.

And that is why the provocation was planned and the candidates, their team members, journalists and ordinary citizens were arrested. Those who are weaker were broken; the strong ones are being murdered. Slowly and violently.

Andrei Sannikov, who was thrown to the KGB jail, is being murdered this way.

According to independent observers and human rights activists, at the polling stations where forgery was excluded, Sannikov’s landslide was obvious and unquestionable.

Today special services carefully disguise this information by shutting mouths of journalists and human rights activists, by breaking democratic activists in prisons, forcing them to refrain from active political rhetoric and activity after their “release” with the ban to leave the country.

The mass terror against the opposition that burst out in the country made people forget about the presidential election. The western world did not recognise the election, the page was turned. But the most important is that Lukashenka keeps on destroying the most decent people, those who can take his place and finally bring the country to a completely new level of development.

Ahead of the 2001 election, Viktar Ganchar, Yury Zakharanka, Genadz Karpenka were kidnapped and murdered. After the 2006 election Alyaksandar Kazulin was thrown into prison.

Today the usurper is finishing off Andrei Sannikov, while frightened Belarus is watching in silence.

During the demonstration of 19 December, Sannikov was beaten up by the special police units. According to witnesses, the slaughter was deliberate. There was an order on the specific person. The car in which the politician, whose legs were smashed, was being taken to the hospital was stopped and Sannikov was thrown behind the bars.

As former prisoners of the KGB prison say, Sannikov was treated very hard. In the beginning he was interrogated all the time and exposed to humiliating searches three times a day.

The politicians confirmed tortures at the trial. Masked men from an unknown special division armed with batons and electroshock weapon maltreated political prisoners in the KGB jail. During a period of interrogations, Sannikov had to sleep on the floor under a bunk; suffered from denigrating searches, when he had to stand naked by the wall with feet wider than shoulders; handcuffed, he had his arms twisted and was hit in his legs with a baton.

He was blackmailed; they threatened the safety and well-being of his wife, a well-known journalists detained at the same time with him, and transferred to house arrest after 1.5-month imprisonment. They threatened to send his three-year old son to an orphanage.

But Sannikov did not break. He sent the dictator no letter of penance. And he would never keep silence and hide in the underground in case of liberation before the trial. He would firmly insist on a new, democratic presidential election without Lukashenka. And that is why today the famous politician and diplomat is accused on a most dreadful article of the Criminal code that implies a sentence of up to 15 years of imprisonment.

Obviously after the mass repressions and the explosion in the Minsk subway, the Belarusians are paralyzed with fear. But we must fight the fear. Otherwise soon we’ll die, too frightened to breathe.

In his television statement before the election Andrei Sannikov said the words which should be recalled today: “The Belarusian people’s tolerance is truly legendary and is described in lots of stories and anecdotes, but it has its limits. And the history knows many occasions when the people took responsibility for the fate of their land. So why then have we tolerated this stupid, awkward dictatorship for so long?

Lukashenka calls us the opposition. But he himself and his team – Drozdy dwellers (Drozdy – a luxurious residence area in the suburb of Minsk where Lukashenka and the highest Belarusian officials live) - became the opposition for a long time ago. It is them who are opposed to the Belarusian people. And we are not the opposition, we do not live behind the high fence of Drozdy, we live in our country and we are masters of our land. On 19 December the most courageous men and the most beautiful women will come to the Square.”

And this is exactly what happened. The most courageous men and the most beautiful women came to the Square.

You were there, tens of thousands of brave Belarusians. Those who voted against the dictator are millions.

On May 14, the Partyzanski district court of Minsk continued illegal and inhuman trial over Andrei Sannikov, fro whom lots of you voted. The man, who has a real chance to become a new president of Belarus, was sentenced to 5 years in a medium security penal colony.

Remember yourself on December 19. Only four months have passed since then, although these months have been frightening. We cannot forget what we were then, in December, because then we were better, brighter, purer in our urge for freedom and desire to change the fate of the country. The history is being made today. The history is being made by us. And, of course, not in the kitchens, but on the Square.

Natallya Radzina