Turn on VPN for Grandma

And let Lukashenka push his ministers off a cliff.

The other day friends of my mother-in-law came to congratulate her on the anniversary. The average age of the company was 80 years. All are educated, intelligent people. They surely discussed the blocking of the Charter. They tried to what to do next. And it turned out that words like "Tor", "anonimazer", "VPN" caused fear. It's like offering them to drive a spaceship.

The Charter used to be in bookmarks or on homepage which were set up by children or grandchildren. But their children and grandchildren usually work abroad and arrive once a year. Or they do not arrive at all and invite their elderly relatives to visit them. And there is a thing I came up with when I talked to my mother-in-law and her friends.

The blocking of Charter is other blow on pensioners. It does not make any impact on the youth who always have their smartphones with them and use Opera Mini, which hepls them to bypass the blocking. It does not affect the middle-aged people who still remember their first attempts to connect to the Internet. Then it required hard efforts, so they formed the habit to look further into every challenge and keep their eyes on the prize - the Internet connection. They will deal with it, don't worry.

So, elderly people have become the main target of the blocking. Most of them are still naive users. Children and grandchildren presented them laptops and set up Internet access, home page and bookmarks. And our dear grandparents are used to press "on", and then visit all necessary sites with one click. And now they have to start over. For most of them it's too much.

Everyone has noticed that Lukashenka holds old people in contempt. Just recall his comments on abolition of travel benefits: "Where can a pensioner go? They will reach a pharmacy or a polyclinic on foot." He believes that the life of an old person is a polyclinic, a pharmacy, and an impoverished existence. And they'd better be grateful for not being pushed off a cliff. Do these old sausages read the Charter? Do they agree with it? Well, then they will be deprived of it and will watch only TV sets. And believe me the Charter will be blocked again as soon as a European politician leave the country. The decision of the Ministry of Information is final and binding. It's useless to wait on some thaw to come.

And now it becomes clear what to do. Do you remember video "Hide your grandma's passport" uploaded before elections in 2010? A grandson was at his grandmother's when people collecting signatures for a guessed candidate Zhirafenko came. The grandson found her passport and hid it behind captions "hide your grandmother's passport, save Belarus!". It was a joke, the majority of pensioners hated the power then. However, there was the active minority, so the video was witty and actual.

Now it's time to run a completely different campaign. You can name it whatever you like: "Turn on VPN for Gradma", "Change the DNS", Install Tor for Grandma", as your like. The main thing is to do. Help your elderly relatives to keep in touch with the Charter. When growing up, we think we help our old relatives. But, in fact, they help us. They take care of our children, giving us a chance to go to the Square, they give us parcels when we are in prisons, they spend their last money to help political prisoners, send postcards in prisons. Believers pray. Agnostics let rip. Let's help them to stay in touch with the world.

Spare time, visit them and make the Charter return. You'll get some home-baked products for it. Our grandparents will always share something with you.

Iryna Khalip, specially for Charter97.org