We Call It Progress?!

There were disputes on the concert on Freedom Day not only in Belarus, but also in Brussels.

An expanded meeting of the European Parliament delegation on relations with Belarus was held three days before Freedom Day on March 22. MEPs from all major factions, representatives of the OSCE, the European Commission and the European External Action Service met to discuss the past elections to the local Councils of Deputies and the Belarus-EU relations.

The time was given also to discuss the concert at the Opera House. Aliaksei Yanukevich (BPF party) and European MP Petras Auštrevičius (Lithuania) did not agree on this issue.

Aliaksei Yanukevich, who represented the Belarusian democratic opposition at the meeting, first raised the issue of the concert. Previous speakers had already recognized the election as undemocratic. There was an active discussion of the blocking of the Charter-97 website and the preventive arrests of Uladzimir Niakliayeu, Viachaslau Siuchyk and Maksim Viniarski (they were arrested the day before the meeting).

European deputies and officials learned about the prosecution of independent bloggers, the law on insulting the Belarusian "president", the planned changes in legislation, increasing control over social networks. Discussion began on the possibility of imposing sanctions against the Minister of Information, his deputy and the head of the Operations and Analysis Center under the President of the Republic of Belarus.

Right at that moment, Aliaksei Yanukevich decided to tell about various positive moments of the allowed concert. The inspired speech in perfect English with well-placed intonations ended with the words: "For the first time in twenty years, we see events, exhibitions, posters, white-red-white flags, a rally and a concert in the very center of the city on Freedom Day. This unprecedented progress gives hope that in the future we will be able to launch a dialogue on human rights."

The proposal to temporarily forget about human rights in exchange for permission to hold a concert sounded so absurd in the European Parliament that the next speaker, MEP from Lithuania Petras Auštrevičius began his speech with the words about the concert:

"As they say, don't take it on trust alone. I do not understand why we should rejoice having got a permission to hold one event in the center of the city to celebrate the centenary of a European country.

Do we hold this as the progress?!! This is an abnormal situation.

I really like this title – Freedom Day, which means a day of freedom. However, Belarus celebrates the centenary of its independence. In a normal European country, this should be a year of freedom, not a day of freedom," – the MEP said.

A few days before the publication of this post, I asked the organizers of the concert at the Opera House to condemn the mass arrests on Freedom Day and issue a corresponding joint statement.

At the time of publication, the official statement of the organizers, condemning the mass detention on Freedom Day was still off the website of the concert BNR100.bai. Let me remind you that the overwhelming majority of more than 125 detainees either intended to take part in the concert, or were detained after leaving the concert grounds.

Earlier, after the concert (and mass detentions), one of the organizers Anton Matolka said: "I want to express a huge respect for the police." On March 26, the day after the concert, another organizer Eduard Palchys wrote in his facebook that "the Minsk city Directorate of Internal Affairs had behaved extremely well and friendly near the Opera house – well done," and that the arrests were made by some "weird creatures."

Dzianis Kazakevich, Facebook