19 March 2024, Tuesday, 10:50
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The White Noise

18
The White Noise
IRYNA KHALIP

Is our reaction to the drill in our neighbor’s apartment sharper than to the repression?

A guy I know took a picture of grumpy teenagers in dark sports clothes with the “Youth Detachment of Public Order Protection” in the street, and posted the photo on Facebook. These guys wander about the city, allegedly helping the police to prevent offenses. Open faces, precise profiles, heavy looks. One cannot but recall at once the youngster with bushy blond hair from the movie by Bob Foss ‘Cabaret’, singing ‘Tomorrow belongs to me’ in the 30s in Berlin. A very similar archetype.

So you gasp with horror for a second – they do go to the BRYU voluntarily, not under some court sentence, they join young police helpers, the “Young Special Policeman” section – but then you go switch on your kettle in the most ordinary way, and scroll the newsfeed and the social network feed further, in search for some real news.

The Korzhych case is over, the prosecutor demanded prison terms for the defendants. Korzhych?.. Oh, yeah, it’s the soldier who was found hanging in a loop, with his ankles tied. The sentence is coming soon? Well, it seems the news about the soldier’s death was reported yesterday. Time flies!

Dzmitry Paliyenka is to come out of the penal colony in less than a week. Oh, yeah, I remember. Why was he put there in the first place? For nothing? Well, he’ll come out and that’s okay. Everything is going to end someday, let him enjoy freedom.

Priest-intellectual Aliaksandr Shramko was fired because he took a picture of the guards and limo of the Patriarch and published it in the social networks. Well, he wasn’t shot or exiled to Siberia. He has a pension of BYN 250, but for whom life is easy?

The monument to Mikhail Zhyzneuski was defaced once again – so what, the dead don’t feel pain.

Leader of the Babrusik branch of the REP trade union Halina Smirnova receives threats, while the police do nothing. Don’t worry, Halina, serious guys don’t threat, they murder. If someone is threatening you, it’s okay, there’s a chance to survive.

Belsat journalist Volha Chaichyts is detained again – come on, Volha, they only fine you, not torture or jail. Chill out – you will earn more money, and each detention is a dozen of reports in various media, respect the work of your colleagues, continue to create news hooks. Besides, if you have nothing to eat because of all those fines – we can buy some pelmeni for you, the whole country will contribute as we have always demonstrated miracles of solidarity.

In the neighbouring country, Oleg Sentsov got to the intensive care. It’s weird it happened only now – he has been on a hunger strike for a long time. Well, nothing terrible, they will smoothly end his hunger strike, put a glass-dropper into every functioning vein – he will spend some time in a hospital, it’s better than in the punititve confinement of the colony detachment.

Brest bloggers Piatrukhin and Kabanau got 5 days of detention each for the participation in the meeting against the construction of the battery plant, human rights defender Raman Kisliak was taken to the hospital from the detention facility, and the trial was postponed for four days – let them treat him first and then put to jail. What are those four days of an administrative arrest anyway, compared with real criminal terms, or, moreover, with the world revolution? What? Kisliak has high blood pressure? Well, who hasn’t? What does he think he is – some Newton binomial? Others go to jail with cancer and diabetes, and not for five days, and all he has is high blood pressure.

All these events happened on the same day. All of them went in the news feed of different Belarusian media, but none made it to the top. The top news was the Patriarch’s visit and paraphrases on this theme. I have no doubt that many readers, yawning, scrolled down other news saying: “So boring… Nothing interesting has happened since long ago.”

We still can be touched by a war, a terrorist act, a murder – but only the one which is most bloody and demonstrative. Or at the very least, by mass arrests, like the White Legion case. The usual everyday repressions are perceived by us as nothing but the white noise. As if tires are just rustling outside, the wind is blowing, the rain is knocking on the window sill, a cat is purring. As if all this is a normal daily life. As if there have never been the times when people were imprisoned or fired for nothing. As if this is the way it should be. We react much more emotionally to the annoying drill in the neighbor's apartment than to the gradual destruction of the people.

Isn’t it what they have been trying to achieve for years?

In that case, let them celebrate success. They have achieved.

Iryna Khalip, specially for Charter97.org

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