Dignity March

Action of February 17 may be the beginning of great changes.

This march is for us all. This is the rare chance when political views, aesthetic tastes, attitude towards street protests do not play any role because the unifying factor is much stronger. We are angry Belarusians. And this march is the rally of honour. An act of respect to ourselves. An effort to return the dignity.

We were told at school: "Every family in the Soviet Union knows what the war means." So, the decree on parasitism is the war as well. Every family has faced it. Brother, match-maker, cousin, sister-in-law, aunt, nephew - someone of them has certainly received the "letter of happiness" and is subject to payment. So, the March of Angry Belarusians is for everybody. And no one will be able to say that it does not touch upon me, sorry.

I know people who have never participated in protest actions. They used to say that the policy was a dirty business and it sounded disgusting for a normal person. They used to say that "both the opposition and Lukashenka are the same, no one is trustworthy." They pretended that they felt comfortable, and called their way of life a petit bourgeois. Many of them and their relatives lost jobs and received "accusation" to pay a sponger tax.

I know entrepreneurs who asked activists before a protest to be careful about things they wanted to say, because entrepreneurs aimed to gain the revocation of the third point of the fourth paragraph in the fifth order. And then everything will be fine, the main thing is to survive and be preserved in our own carriage limited with paragraphs. Now many of those entrepreneurs have no job, are exhausted with debts and taxes, and have received a notice to pay the duty as the final flourish.

I know mothers who have ignored protests for their children: "I am an unmarried mother and my child often get sick, I cannot find a job because they do not want me to spend more time on a sick leave than at a work place. There is no one who could protect me, parents are pensioners. Yes, it hurts to be constantly humiliated. If I go to the meeting, I may be arrested and imprisoned and then I will not find any job and will have problems with child protective services. I'd better be quiet. This is the way they think. Now even mothers are spongers.

The state leveled all of them - a manager who lost his job because of the crisis, a housewife, an entrepreneur, an opposition activist, a half-disabled person - and turned into rubbish. They now owe to the state, which has ruined the economy and keeps destroying their lives. But the state is not able to recognize its helplessness and incompetence and looks for those to blame. And here we are. Everyone has to pay it till the end. Including those who have already passed away. We should pay. We must. We owe not to our families, children and parents, but a brainless Moloch of our century that has caught with its teeth the post "center of Europe".

So, the March of Angry Belarusians is for everybody. All slogans, requirements, ideas touch upon everyone. This is a Dignity March.

It may be the beginning of great changes. The March of Angry Belarusians is not only against the decree on parasitism. Although this is the core reason. If we do not achieve revocation of this slavery decree, tomorrow they will invent the decree that denies us as human beings. So, this march is protection of our right to live and breathe. It will make us remember that we are not a silent mass that can be kicked. It will make them remember the same.

Iryna Khalip, especially for charter97.org