We Are All Standing in Hitch

New life of Belarusian pensioners.

Of course, the heroes of this week are Belarusian pensioners. Beautiful, educated, noble, courageous - this is how the world finally saw them on Monday. The computer keys have not yet cooled down, on which a few witches managed to joke kilograms of jokes about disciplined Belarusians who work for five days, rest on Saturday, and protest on Sunday - and here we go, a column of pensioners is walking along the streets, those people who only walked twenty kilometers on the Sunday march just the day before. And not a trace of fatigue, fear, doom - only excitement, cheerful anger, fearlessness, and the thirst for change.

I know at least three participants of that Monday march of pensioners. The first is Yan Hryb. A poet whose photographs spread all over the world in 2017. Remember the man with a cane who was detained by three riot policemen on the Freedom Day? It was him, Yan Hryb. Now he is 85, and he went to the march - in an embroidered shirt, a straw hat, with his famous cane - a proud nobleman, whom no riot policemen will frighten. The second is Ala Sauchanka, a brilliant teacher of English. Even those who went through an endless number of courses, tutors, schools but remained English non-speakers, started speaking good English with her. Everyone spoke English after Mrs. Sauchanka’s lessons. The third is Halina Lahatskaya, who has been driven to rallies by a heightened sense of justice for many years. She participated in entrepreneurial actions, and in the marches of angry Belarusians, and she was imprisoned in the Akrestsin Street detention center, and in the Zhodzina temporary detention facility. And that's just three people. Take any of the participants in that march - you can write a book about each. And what, did Sasha the Three Percent seriously consider these people and others like them to be his electorate? A person can have all kinds of delusions, but not to such extent ... However, this proves once again that he lives in some completely different world - an illusory, non-existent, possibly inhabited by fairies and unicorns.

In that non-existent world, Belarusian pensioners are not high-class professionals from different spheres, who have gone through so many tests that the threats of a crazy tyrant represent nothing for them but a senseless combination of sounds. In his world, pensioners are dumb grandmothers and grandfathers in headscarves and battered ear-flaps hats, who only dream of having enough pension for bread, and they don't need anything else. He never realized that pensioners are completely different. Some of them even survived the war, so they are used to surviving, they will not be scared by any pension. And they are not dreaming about an increase in government handouts and not about benefits, which they were deprived of because Sasha the Three Percent decided that the life of a pensioner is a house, a pharmacy and a polyclinic. They dream of living in a free country, and most importantly, for their children and grandchildren to live in a free country. For the sake of children and grandchildren, they will go to the march, and they will sew flags, spending their pension on fabric, and they will join the partisans. And if you remember how many queues they have already stood in the pre-trial detention centers and the police stations, with parcels for their children and grandchildren, how many nights they spent calling police departments in search of their relatives, how many times they snapped their voices cursing this regime - can there really be something else to frighten them? Of course, nothing.

During these few days pensioners have got their own flag, their own Telegram channel and their own chat. In the chat they get to know each other, come up with chants and posters for new protests, learn by heart the “Bring Down Prison Walls” song, discuss how to reeducate a few “YaBatska” fellows, offer each other help. One knits white-red-white scarves for new friends, the other offers to help with the repair of clothes and shoes, the third teaches the Belarusian language to those who did not speak before, and now really want to learn. And they also ask: “Let's not use the word “pensioners” in this chat. We are just the older youth!” I read their chat and am glad: great youth have grown up here!

So it was a mistake when, a month ago, when the protests were already in full swing, and pensioners went to the Sunday marches together with everyone, Sasha the Three Percent called them “the support of statehood” and in his usual oblivion asserted that “pension is sacred.” No, Sasha, for elderly Belarusians what is sacred is not a pension at all, but the happiness of their children and grandchildren. For this, they take to the streets, walk dozens of kilometers, sew flags and draw posters. That is, for our sake. And we stand for them. We are all connected by these strongest ties - family, friends, workers, neighbors - thanks to which we have long felt as if we were standing in a hitch. We have really been in this hitch for two months. And no one can break it.

Iryna Khalip, exclusively for Charter97.org

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