Ex-Employee of Lukashenka’s Administration Calls for Strike Action

Belarusians have a chance to change things.

Anatoly Kotov, a former employee of Lukashenka's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Administration, addressed Belarusian officials and urged them to take part in the forthcoming general strike in Belarus. The video of the appeal was published on his Youtube channel by Dzmitry Bolkunets:

- Good afternoon, dear friends! My name is Anatoly Kotov. I used to work in the civil service. It was Lukashenka's Administration, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Belarus. In other words, I am a civil servant with many years of experience. I am one of you.

Why did we join the civil service? The answer is, in general, simple: to serve the Belarusian people. However, we are now in a different reality, which is even beyond the limits of the old KVN joke: "I would like to serve, to honey up and grovel if anything".

You now have to do things that are beyond "groveling". Every day you have to show some kind of fierce loyalty, give hundreds of meaningless assignments, monitor the likes of your employees on social networks, the expression of protest symbolism or rhetoric, the manifestation of some dissenting opinions. You are forced to snitch on each other. At the same time, nobody trusts you because everyone is being bugged. All this is absolute nonsense that should not be practised in the modern Belarusian state.

You have a chance to change all this. All you need is to go on strike.

So, what is a strike? For you, it can have two options. The first one is the work-to-rule strike. It is a sabotage of the assignments you follow. The second, the most reasonable is to stay home. It is your legal right that cannot be taken away from you.

But you will solve several problems at once. Firstly, you will spend time with your family, whom you finally stop putting in danger after being forced to participate in endless yabatka-style and other mass rallies where even basic masking is broken. I'm not talking about social distancing at all. I think everyone has forgotten what it even is. Take care of your loved ones.

Remember self-respect and respect by the Belarusian people come first. And now you are just annoying them. You have become one of the objects of their hatred. Because they see their enemies in you who are much closer. You are the ones who pass verdicts. It's your hands that issue fines. It's your hands that take children away from their families. You are the ones who falsify statistics on the same coronavirus. Then you suffer the consequences of making the wrong decisions, knowing that you are responsible for it. You are no longer doing your job.

Our task was to build a new Belarus: competent, smart and developing. Unfortunately, it was all an illusion. This system does not allow anyone to realize their competence if you are not corrupted if you do not suppress protests. Now you don't even have the opportunity to carry out your duties. You are being driven into a work-to-rule strike. All you hear at the meetings now mean everyone understands that you are already on a work-to-rule strike. It is impossible to carry out so many meaningless, thoughtless, incoherent assignments. They contradict one another and, most importantly, are just a pointless waste of your nerves, efforts and mind. Meanwhile, you are constantly being humiliated. Your children are jailed, beaten and tortured just like any other citizen of Belarus.

Will you stop humiliating yourselves? Let's go on strike and say no to this lawlessness.

Take the side of the people. Go on strike. Say no to the regime!