How to fight for democracy?

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.