Whom Does Minister Shunevich Serve?

And another thing, just out of curiosity – when will the thread go stripped?

It may seem weird to some, but I have rather positive than negative impressions after my personal direct contacts with the Belarusian police.

They say our Hrodna traffic police inspectorate is the severest in the country, but when I got caught several times, they punished me fairly, did not extort any bribes and behaved totally polite. When some rascal from the ideology department wrote a slander against me and my colleagues, like, they work for a foreign mass media, the police investigated into it and sent a “no offense revealed” note.

However, these are personal matters, as there are many normal decent people who work in the Belarusian police, and they, to put it mildly, disapprove Lukashenka, just like us. Another thing is the whole police system, totally inhumane, fake and dishonest. Starting from the name, as militia in Belarus is a state structure, thus it is actually a police, but militia should be a popular formation. And the name of the State Security Committee is fake, as it is a classical secret police in Belarus, which guards not security of the state, but the one of the regime.

Let us take the ideology of the biggest police boss Minister Shunevich and his top supervisors (I believe this is Viktar Lukashenka). The fact that the Minister wears the NKVD uniform in public is immoral, provocative, but understandable – here he is, a Stalinist from Luhansk, who got into a favourable environment. However, it’s much more difficult to understand why the 100th anniversary of the Belarusian police is celebrated in 2018 (in the actual fact, it was founded in the XVIII century), and at the same time a monument to a tsarist policeman is erected! Herein, the Bolshevist militia started from dispersal and hunting for such policemen! Here is a logical riddle for you.

The answer is simple – there is no riddle, all these actions perfectly fit into the modern Russia-Putin ideology. The essence of it is the conjunction of the ideologies of the two Russias, the tsarist and the Soviet, on the basis of imperialism.

Meanwhile, Belarus here, following the “good Soviet tradition”, is a foothold, a firing ground for testing and practicing of manifestations of ideologies and forms of a police state. The country is comparatively not so big, so it’s easier to start a process, and easier to slow it down or correct, if necessary.

As for the monument to a policeman, they made a stupid mistake here, underestimated Belarusians, just like in the case with the decree “on social parasites”. The regime has no feedback from the society, apart from mass protests. Because, there are no elections, when this feedback clearly manifests itself. They unveiled this monument solemnly, with a big fuss for the whole country, and the people started laughing and mocking. However, what’s done can’t be undone, they could only tighten the screws and punish for the tiniest, even joky manifestations of disrespect, organize guarding, video surveillance (for our money, besides), to reveal the “criminals”.

So, they caught a boy by this camera – he was kidding, tapped the bronze trar’s servant on the cheek. They showed a TV-report, but faked it again – they said some vigilant policemen were driving in the car and noticed the incident, but in fact showed the video taken by a surveillance camera.

Basing on the above, I have two questions. First, whom does Minister Shunevich serve? And the second one, just out of curiosity, with regard to tightening the screws. When will the thread go stripped?

Ales Krautsevich, Radio Liberty