"The People Will Never Forget and Will Not Forgive": A Powerful Monologue by Vasil Khamutouski

Belarusians are constantly looking for new peaceful forms of protest.

Massive protests after the elections and violence by the security forces changed the life of Belarus, including in sports. And Vasil Khamutouski is one of the faces of protest in Belarusian football.

The Tribuna journalists published the coach's monologue about how he has lived for 4 months after leaving Dynama Brest, how he experiences events in the country, and why he believes in the success of the protesters in Belarus:

- I spent 13 years of my career abroad. I flew to Minsk only to play for the national team and on vacation. I even defended Lukashenka from attacks in the German and Romanian press. I sincerely believed in my words.

I changed my attitude to Lukashenka only in the summer of 2020, when I saw how the election campaign was going. The detention of candidates Babaryka and Tsikhanouski, the refusal to register candidates, the elections themselves and violations at them, unjustified violence against own people... If I had not seen it myself, I would not have believed that this could happen in my country.

People went to peaceful protests, and they were shot and thrown flashbangs at; they were beaten and arrested. And people had nothing in their hands - and the whole world saw it.

In October, I was fined for participating in a protest. Then I said in court: "I went out to exercise my right to peacefully protest, given to me by Article 35 of the Constitution of the Republic of Belarus. Without sanctioning peaceful protests and not allowing people to express their civil rights under the Constitution, the main law of the country, you force people to commit offenses."

I do not give up my words. Let me emphasize: the protests in Belarus are precisely peaceful, no matter how they try to present them differently on state TV. After the terrible events of August 9-11, a huge number of people gathered all over the country for three or four weekends. This is the people's response to the extreme level of violence from the security forces during arrests - and then in paddy wagons, in the local police department, on Akrestsina Street.

One event does not go out of my head. August 9, Brest. I lived there in the center, near the pedestrian street. Hearing shots and explosions, I went down, like many neighbors, into the street to the arch of the house. I saw how flashbang grenades were thrown at the feet of people who had nothing in their hands. They were seized and beaten.

In the following months, the whole world watched how, on the streets and in the courtyards of our cities, people without identification marks (in jeans and sneakers), hiding their faces under balaclavas or simply masks, pulling caps on their very nose, with clubs or with weapons in their hands, were beating people, who did not attack and did not commit any aggressive actions, and threw them into paddy wagons and tinted minibuses without license plates.

I have a question for these people: why are you hiding faces in front of your citizens if you follow the law? So are you serving because of conscience or fear?

There are good words: if you want to destroy the country, start punishing the innocent and not punishing the guilty. But now, almost everyone has a smartphone with a camera and the Internet, and he can take a video or photo and instantly share it. People increasingly reject the dissonance between reality and the stories that are shown on state channels.

Mini-lecture on the white-red-white flag of Belarus: propaganda passes it off as a fascist one, although Lukashenka took the oath under it

After the terrible events in August, the situation was saved by women who went out with flowers and stood along the roads in a solidarity chain.

Then retirees marched regularly - on Mondays. On Thursdays - disabled people marched, on Saturdays - women. Everyone marched on Sundays. More than 30,000 people have already been arrested since the start of the protests. They were arrested only for walking with unwanted symbols.

People are beaten, shot at, and threatened with dismissals - and they come out every Sunday to protest against numerous violations in the last elections and the arbitrariness of the security forces and officials.

There were and are attempts to divide the people according to national symbols, to divert the focus and attention away from the main problems. It failed and will not succeed.

If you saw, people came out to protest, tying two flags - the current state and historical white-red-white with the emblem Pahonia. I will explain in detail because now the state propaganda is trying to pass off the white-red-white flag as a fascist one.

The flag depicts a horseman with a six-pointed cross of our Saint Euphrosyne of Polotsk on a shield. This coat of arms has existed for many centuries: since the XIV century, it was the coat of arms of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Now it is officially a historical and cultural value of our country.

The Belarusian Hussar Regiment and the Hrodno Life Guards Hussar Regiment had a white-red-white flag with the emblem Pahonia depicted on it. They fought together with the Russian army against Napoleon. In 1918, Klaudzi Duzh-Dusheuski proposed to approve it as the flag of the Belarusian People's Republic. And from 1991 to 1995, these are the official symbols of Belarus. Under this flag, Lukashenka took the oath...

The regime began persecuting the white-red-white flag and the Pahonia, not realizing that the centuries-old symbols became a symbol of the people's protest, not a cause. The reason is the election violations and the extreme brutality of the security forces.

I hope there will be more decent officers, for whom officer honor is not an empty phrase. My father and mother served in the police. I am proud of my father. I wanted to follow in his footsteps and enter the Academy of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. But after graduating from school, I signed my first professional contract, and a few years later, I left to play in Germany. The dream has remained a dream.

I am glad that my father and mother are already retired. It's even hard for me to imagine how they would feel if they were in the system.

The main result of the protests is the unification of Belarusians. The strength of the spirit of the people is that they do not respond with force

I do not have the feeling that the protest has weakened, that the people have missed the chance. You cannot hold on to power for a long time only with the help of the security forces and your party activists with ideologists when practically the whole country is against it.

There is a small percentage of people in the country who trust the picture on state channels and do not believe in the reality of what is happening outside the window of their apartment or house. But they are getting smaller. Even if the whole country is intimidated and forced into the kitchen, it will do nothing. People have already had a fracture in consciousness.

In my opinion, practically no one here believes that Lukashenka won the election. I will quote the words of the Russian director Karen Shakhnazarov and about 80 percent of the votes he won: "We need to release all political prisoners and hold new elections." On my own, I would add: it is necessary to invite observers from Russia and Europe to the elections so that no one has any questions.

I want one thing: that the elections are held openly and transparently. And I accept whom they choose. This is the choice of the people of my country.

Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya has officially stated more than once that she is a technical candidate - having won the presidential elections, she will release political prisoners and announce new presidential elections. The people who were forced to leave by the regime will return to the country. Hopefully, it will still be possible to restore the IT sector.

I am sure that if a new crisis occurs in Belarus, the people will no longer allow dictatorship and their own lack of rights. Anyone who is familiar with the situation in our country from the inside knows: people are united. The only question is time.

Do you know what the strength of the spirit of the people of Belarus is? People don't respond with force. Then they would give the regime a legal basis for the same response. Now men in balaclavas and without insignia, beating up their people, look like gangsters from an organized criminal group. And the most interesting and unexpected for me is that people are still looking for new peaceful forms of protest against the regime and the security forces' violence.

The people will never forget and forgive. During these months, a civil society that respects itself and is ready to help everyone who has suffered has formed.