Ales Bialiatski's Wife: There's Another Belarus

Natallia Pinchuk opened a prestigious festival in Germany.

The Gerenhiemsee Festival, which has a 20-year tradition, brings together German and European creative and political elite. It is a festival of European classical music in the historic palace of the kings of Bavaria on Lake Chiemsee, where the Federal Republic of Germany was founded, writes Radio Svaboda.

The patron of the festival is the head of the royal house Franz Duke of Bavaria, the artistic director is the famous American conductor Kent Nagano.

The iconic words of the current festival are disturbing - "World Murmur".

Maestro Nagano's concept is that the concerts take a European cultural and political perspective, and therefore the idea of musical expression is linked to the values of freedom and democracy. For this reason, the festival opens with a keynote address by a distinguished European speaker.

This year's speaker was Natallia Pinchuk, wife of the imprisoned Nobel laureate Ales Bialiatski. In a half-hour speech, she told the high-ranking guests about Belarus and the Belarusian people, their place in Europe and their thirst for freedom.

"Inter arma silent Musae. This is a paraphrased expression of Cicero, who himself spoke about laws.

But the bloody war, visible and invisible, has started again on our continent. That is why international law must have its voice, and the muses must not be silent, but must be a reminder of what human beings should live for.

And war is just around the corner. "My imprisoned husband Ales Bialiatski is a human rights activist. He is a literary scholar. I am a a historian of culture. For example, there were Belarusian folk motifs in the works of Ludwig van Beethoven. We, Belarusians, can clearly hear them in Beethoven's 9th Symphony. Where did they come from?

The composer received them as a gift from the Russian ambassador under the title "Songs of the North-West Territory". So, "North-Western Krai" was Belarus in the XIX century under the occupation of the Russian Empire, so there was no indication that it was a separate country and a special people.

And today the pro-Russian dictator Aliaksandr Lukashenka, who has been ruling for 29 years, tries to speak on behalf of Belarus. It is he who gives consent to Russian nuclear weapons in Belarus. He officially invites the Russian military. He is responsible for the fact that Russian bombers and missiles fly from the territory of Belarus and destroy peaceful Ukrainian cities.

But there is another Belarus. It's free, open, making a European choice. The nation that surprised the world in 2020, when millions of Belarusians took part in peaceful protests against brazenly rigged elections.

Today they are trying to destroy and trample on this free Belarus," said the wife of political prisoner Beliatski.