The Year of Bison

Happy New Year, Belarus!

The expiring year was the best one in the life of our Belarus! This year we convinced ourselves and convinced everyone that we can!

And next year we can say that we could!

In the expiring year, we got to know ourselves.

We used to walk around; we even recognized each other's faces, but it was the first time we felt like a family.

Now everyone knows at least a couple of dozens of people from one's courtyard, a hundred in the neighbourhood and thousands all over the country. According to the six degrees of separation, everybody knows everybody.

The whole normal Belarus has got to know each other.

We introduced ourselves to the whole world.

How was it before? We, men, always were proud to say that our women were the most beautiful and the best. We did not tolerate any objections, despite all our tolerance.

Now everyone has acknowledged it. Once you mention such names as Nina, Olya, Lena, you hear from all over the world: Bahinskaya, Khizhynkova, Leuchanka. Are they all Belarusians?

Yes, of course. We have the best athletes. Sasha Herasimenya, Yehor Meshcherakou, Nadzezhda Astapchuk, Sasha Ramanouskaya. They have received the Olympic flame not from the hands of officials, but from the very Olympians, who were heroes, crowned with laurel wreaths, but not with the ranks of KGB officers.

We have the best doctors. They have not taken an oath to a dictator, but have taken the Hippocratic oath, like Artem Sarokin, who did not let one slander a murdered man by saying and declared valid "zero permille".

Our pensioners are the best in the world. Holocaust survivor Larisa Soys and regular protester poet Jan Hryb. They are increasingly beautiful and calm, even when one arrests them. They don't worry about themselves. They worry about their loved ones and their country.

And the musicians? Pasha Arakelyan, Illya Cherepko-Samokhvalov, TOR BAND... There are hundreds of them; one wants to listen to them endlessly!

Artists, actors, students...

How dare anyone use batons against all this magnificence, this spiritual and material beauty? It passes all understanding.

All those who order and use violence against peaceful citizens of Belarus, pass unlawful sentences on trumped-up cases, all perjured witnesses make it clear that they have nothing to do with our country. Every switch of a baton is a statement about the renunciation of Belarusian citizenship. Hit the road!

Our first toast on New Year's Eve is to those who are behind bars today through the fault of criminals. We know the names of people behind bars, and we will remember the names of those who put them there.

On New Year's Eve, we shall remember the names of all those who gave their lives for our Belarus, for us. We are alive because they died defending us and Belarus.

The expiring year has become the year of Belarus in the world. The coming year will be the year of a free Belarus!

The coming year will be the year of Bison, a symbol of strength, freedom and dignity.

Happy New Year, Belarus!

Long Live!

Andrei Sannikov, Facebook