A “Stop-Bully” For Europe

The Belarusian NPP is dangerous not only for Lithuania, while Lukashenka remains not just an internal issue of Belarus.

Lithuania is ready to file a lawsuit against Belarus with regard to the NPP. President of Lithuania Dalia Grybauskaitė is asking US Vice-President John Bayden for help, speaking about the dangers the NPP in Astravets would bring to the whole region. All the others are keeping silence due to some reason. They probably think that the NPP is nothing but Lithuania’s problem as it is being constructed close to its border. The same as many have thought for years that Lukashenka is an internal problem of Belarus.

This is the way refined cultured neighbours in a communal apartment for years on end endure one single bully, who keeps on raising a rumpus, throwing stubs under people’s feet right in the communal corridor, kicking a neighbor’s dog and fitting out a self-made bomb at nights. Meanwhile, the neighbours, instead of tying up the bully and straightforwardly explaining to him what is good and what is bad by the whole crowd, using belts and flyswatters, continue to discuss in their common kitchen that he might be rectified with kindness and good manners. The main thing is to help him fit in the beautiful communal collective of the perfectly well-kept house. Probably, to cook a pot of some cabbage soup and invite the bully to dinner. Treating him with house-made baked stuffed buns is also a good idea, and don’t ever forget to congratulate him on his birthday. The bully will understand that it is better to leave in peace and consent with the neighbours and change. As for the thing that it scares people to enter his room – this is his personal business. Let him make a bomb – the main point is to keep it quiet.

Today, it’s just Lithuania that tells about the danger of the NPP construction in Astravets. All the others probably think this doesn’t concern them. We can also recall that some were even willing to help to build it: France was one of the participants of the tender. Did they really think that, if anything cropped up, Belarus was far away? No, Belarus is close. And the radiation has no need to pass the customs and borderline control. It doesn’t care where France is. They started talking about the Chernobyl disaster when a splash of radioactivity was recorded in Sweden.

Of course, the French project is probably much better than the Russian one, and the French definitely wouldn’t throw a reactor from a 4-meters height to see whether it would crack or not. However, even if someone creates the most perfect and flawless powder keg, he is unlikely to give a burning squib to an inadequate person.

I hope that Europe will realize in the end of the day that the Belarusian NPP is dangerous not only for Lithuania, and Lukashenka remains not just an internal issue of Belarus. Dictatorship in Europe has always been the whole Europe’s problem. Because, first, dictators sooner or later want bigger territories than the one which is marked by their state borders; secondly, they don’t care what is happening at the other side of the border. Sooner or later, dictators start building NPPs without projects, elaborating nuclear or chemical weapons and selling them to terrorists, testing atomic bombs, exploding the world and hell with it. It never happens the way when a dictator, an NPP and trading with terrorists are not interconnected. The very morality of a communal apartment works here: if a neighbor shits in his room, it is senseless to treat him with buns hoping he will change. Sooner or later he will start spitting into someone else’s pots and setting his neighbours’ doors on fire. It is important to stop a bully timely.

Iryna Khalip, specially for charter97.org