29 March 2024, Friday, 12:19
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Authorities Work To Update Decree On "Parasites"

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Authorities Work To Update Decree On "Parasites"

People's discontent will reach a peak by the end of the year.

The well-known video blogger from Homel and the active participant in the spring protests Maksim Filippovich said this in an interview with Charter97.org.

– Perhaps, everyone interested in the events in Belarus knows your name after the protests that took place this spring. Looking back, how do you assess the spring of 2017?

– The outbreak of people's protests was stormy and active. Neither I nor many other people even expected this. They did not expect that three thousand people would take to the streets of Homel. They did not expect the 5,000th march in Minsk. And in other cities everything went unusually actively.

Further activity of protests declined. Intelligence services tried to intimidate people before the May 1 rally: they detained many people and took many people somewhere to "talk". They did not even let me out of the porch that day.

– You said that many did not even expect such large-scale protests. What are the reasons that so many people took to the streets?

– The reasons are obvious. In the context of the economic decline, when the enterprises are maintained afloat artificially, they began to throw people out onto the street, calling it "job cuts." Although these are not "job cuts" – they just don't renew people's contracts.

And in the conditions when some people were left without work, and the workers began to receive much lower wages, they adopt a decree on "parasites" and raise the retirement age. The authorities drew those protests down on themselves by their own actions.

In such conditions, it is just some kind of insanity to demand people to pay more. And people reacted adequately: they took to the streets.

– Have the factors that caused large scale protests disappeared somewhere?

– Of course, these factors are still there and the economic crisis continues. I think that people will repeat the protests. Because the situation in Belarus continues to deteriorate - I do not see any improvements.

Decree No. 3 has not been canceled, they have just "frozen" it for revision. Not everyone understands this, including some of my acquaintances. But I explain to them. Many have forgotten how to treat information critically and defend their rights during the 23 years of this government. We should teach people, we should work with them.

And life in Belarus will get worse and worse day by day. Given that the government does nothing to improve the situation, it will be three times worse than today. Therefore, we expect that people will take to the streets again.

– When can this happen?

– I think that deterioration of the life of the population, popular discontent and protest moods will reach their peak by the end of this year - the beginning of the next. Again, the so-called "work on update" of Decree No. 3 will end and this again will increase people's discontent.

– As a blogger who shoots realistic stories, you often have to communicate with ordinary people. What is most annoying for Belarusians now?

– The greatest irritant is that the authorities absolutely lack the capacity for dialogue. People are annoyed that no one wants to hear them, that the authorities never discuss the most acute issues with them.

I was in many cities during the protest spring of 2017. I was shocked at how high the wall between power and people is. People came because they wanted to have their problems solved through dialogue – in the information field and directly. And the authorities replied only: "your actions are not authorized." Then even worse – arrests and detentions began. This is the most negative feature of the Belarusian authorities: inability to conduct a dialogue with outraged people.

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