How do you keep fighting in a country that is terrorized by a dictator? In Belarus, this means dealing with teargas, state violence and fake news.
In this program, we will be looking into the mass protests in August 2020 with those who participated in them, those who organized them and those who wrote about them. We will also discuss their plans they have to remobilize the Belarusian population.
In Western Europe, we have learnt that democracy cannot be taken for granted. How do you inspire and activate people to care about democracy? Today we compare strategies.
About the speakers
Franak Viačorka is Belarusian politician, journalist and advisor to Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya. Born activist, he was jailed multiple times by the Belarusian government.
Julia Cimafiejeva is a Belarusian poet and translator. Her journal of the massive protests in 2020 has been published recently in Dutch titled Dagen in Minsk.
Ilya Shcharbitski is an activist, living in the Netherlands. The political events taking place in Belarus have shaped the course of his activism.
This programme is part of So Far, Yet So Close: A day-long program of talks, film, and art about the war in Ukraine, activism and the fight against authoritarianism from a Belarusian perspective.
Speakers:
Festival Program So Far, Yet So Close
The war in Ukraine has made it abundantly clear that we’ve not been listening enough to states bordering on Russia. Whether from the Baltic area or from the Caucasus, from Belarus or from Kazakhstan, everyone’s asking: who’s next? In this program, we will discuss with (former) reporters in post-Soviet states what it means to live
It’s been three months since Russia invaded Ukraine, and the future is still unclear. In this program, we will discuss how Europe should react. How has the European political infrastructure held up to war so close to its territories? What’s the importance of independence of gas? Where should Europe stand on providing weaponry and diplomacy? How
Every day we wake up and look at the news, and sometimes you can feel paralysed and silenced in the face of evil and terror. But despite all circumstances we chose to raise my voice and say out loud ‘No!’- no to the war, no to the oppression, no to the death Lena Davidovich, artist
