Your Fault, Lukashenka

Is this what you've been pushing so hard for?

And it's all your fault, Aliaksandr Lukashenka. You did everything so that shots were fired in that apartment in Yakubouski Street. It is your fault that the little boy from the Zeltser family and the little girl from the Fedasiuk family have lost their fathers. Yes, do not turn away, do not pretend that you have an important call. You listen and remember: this is entirely your fault.

For a quarter of a century, you have done everything to split society and expand the space between the people and the state to the size of the abyss. You have done everything to make the free-thinker and the strongman see each other as enemies, not fellow citizens. You have done everything so that the number of free-thinkers would be proportional to the number of the security officers, so that every Belarusian would have his own chastener, so that the "Open, police!" would sound a signal to the resistance, so that everyone who says these words would know: you can fire, the war will charge off everything.

I can even understand why you needed it. It's much easier to control a society that has been split apart. If the security guard and the free-thinker learn to understand one another, it's too damn dangerous (although they will eventually find one, don't you doubt it, but only after you are not there). So you have to pit them against each other every day until the feeling of enmity becomes a reflex. This is exactly what you, Aliaksandr Lukashenka, have been doing systematically, diligently and even with inspiration every day for the last quarter of a century. In fact, you have been doing nothing else.

Twenty years ago, we all - opposition and state - would occasionally meet in certain companies and talk peacefully. A demonstrator and a riot policeman could easily find themselves at the same table and discuss with laughter who had beaten up whom at the last rally: "our people" or vice versa. The riot policemen could ostentatiously, in front of the cameras, drag the girls as if into a police truck, and when turning the corner, let them go with the words "run, girls!". A district police chief would come out of the police station and cadge for a smoke from those who had gathered around the station after their relatives or friends had been detained. He would talk to them peacefully and even calm them down: "None of yours is going to jail for 15 days, we'll draw up the reports and let everybody go, and the courts, as a rule, don't sentence those who have been released, they only fine, so don't worry".

Now it's all in the past. No one will sit down at one table any more, no one will gather in a company in which a policeman and an activist would meet together: those companies have long ago been broken up, everyone has scattered to the different sides of the abyss, and you can't talk heart-to-heart any more - you can't shout to be heard from the other side, - and you can't stretch out your hand or shake it any more. And you, Aliaksandr Lukashenka, are to blame for it.

Two decades ago, two policemen, riot policeman Uladzimir Hoven and operative Hennadz Riabakon, died in a crush at the Niamiha metro station. The whole country mourned over them. And how many mournful posts you, Lukashenka, have seen in social networks about the deceased "Alfa" officer Fedasiuk? And this is also entirely your fault - both his death and the reaction of the society. Twenty-five years you have been doing your best to destroy empathy, sensitivity, compassion in Belarusians. Twenty-five years you have been selflessly keeping the fire under the cauldron of hatred. And the more solidary the society was becoming, the more firewood you personally threw into that fire. If you have not succeeded in making Belarusians simply hate each other - then you are to bring the social hatred to its terminal stage. Let the citizens see an enemy and a potential murderer in every policeman and let the law enforcers see a potential terrorist and a guaranteed "thought criminal" in every Belarusian. This is what you wanted, isn't it, Lukashenka? Isn't it what you've been working so hard to achieve?

It seems to you that you have already achieved it. You are probably dancing today, in the overflow of your joy over how beautifully everything has turned out. Don't be so hasty. Stop. There is no reason to celebrate. You have not succeeded in the main thing: to make us like you. We have been resisting all these years, and we have remained who we are. We haven't become Lukashenkas. We have not lost our names, our memories, our love and our capacity for empathy. We feel sorry for people - and, as the heroine of a stupid movie said, "especially for everyone". Yes, especially for everyone. By the way, we do feel sorry for you, Lukashenka, too. To live in fear of every rustle and guard, to take the shadows of the night for the ghosts of the murdered, to suspect the servants in a conspiracy, to see your own sons as a threat - that is not life at all, but some kind of subtle Chinese torture. And you, Aliaksandr Lukashenka, are the cause of that, too.

Iryna Khalip, specially for Charter97.org

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