Chris (English Blog): Youth Spotlight Interview: Christina Karchevskaya

My interview for World Youth Movement for Democracy:

How could a regional or international network be most helpful in the current situation occurring in Belarus?

I think the best help here in Belarus would be solidarity and spreading information. Regarding real help and action – civic activists are creating a “black list” of people who were involved in beating peaceful people on the streets (the police), who falsified elections (the school teachers and directors), who pressured students and citizens who work for the government to vote during the pre-election period, which is notoriously plagued with violations and falsifications, and those who expel students from schools and universities, KGB workers, BRSM members (the pro-presidential youth organization) and journalists from our governmental TV-stations, newspapers and radios that have lied about what really happened on the 19th of December.

We are asking all countries of the world to ban those on the list by not allowing them to travel to foreign countries because they are actively bringing harm to our society and they deserve to be punished for that. Normally, they would be judged when we gain democracy one day (lustrations)*, but for now a visa ban for those people can serve as a punishment.

On the other hand, we really need to break this visa wall for Belarusians so that people can easily travel to see and experience other normal democratic countries. For instance, Poland grants free visas to Belarusians. A lot of people simply DON’T KNOW how their country SHOULD look like and live like! More than 75% of young people have never been abroad because of a lack of knowing foreign languages and lack of money to get visas!

Also, donations are being collected to help the families of people who have become victims of the regime (http://zmagarka.livejournal.com/1119885.html, http://zhelezko.livejournal.com/47591.html ,http://zmagarka.livejournal.com/1110429.html). Anyone can help, and these accounts are verified.
Also, we are asking people from other countries to sign petitions to support Belarusian people. For example, please take a moment to sign this petition for the release of political prisoners in Belarus:http://www.petitionbuzz.com/petitions/ffppob.

And it would be great to launch some international mechanism that will help Belarusians have new elections because we have a huge number of documented evidence of falsification from the recent elections such as photos, videos, and personal stories. We know that we have no choice with the current mechanism of counting the results of elections, and we won’t have any chance the next time, and even the next time, and we will drown in this small USSR-2. Belarusians have a dark joke now: “Happy New 1937 Year!” – as this was the year of huge repressions and mass killings of “ideology enemies” of the USSR. But if we think this way, if now the 37th year is coming, we will have around 60 more years of this endless terror.

How has social media impacted the street actions due to election fraud? How can it further be used in post-election efforts to hold the government accountable?

Our internet was totally blocked during the protest period. Twitter, Facebook, Gmail and a lot of independent mass-media were blocked. But luckily the regional network Vkontakte.ru was working during that time, and was the only channel operating for a couple of hours. Besides it, the strong and truthful informational channel Euroradio live broadcasting was available and had around 300,000 listeners during that time.

A lot of online and offline campaigns appeared during the post-electoral time. For instance, the campaign “Get Lukashenka to the darkness” (agreement to switch the lights off during his New Year’s speech on 31.12), and also “Angels for political prisoners” (http://help.roh-roh.net/people/ ) that allows volunteers to pick a person from the list of political prisoners and take care of him/her by sending cards, gifts etc. There is a campaign called “Meet New Years with political prisoners” that brings champaign and candles to celebrate next to their windows in prison. And a lot of new songs about election events have appeared (“Sania (Lukashenka), go away!”), a lot of examples of self-made political and social leaflets appeared on the web (http://narod.ru/disk/1913778001/Rezanans2.pdf.html , http://bit.ly/hF1H4o ,http://bit.ly/f0hG7u , http://bit.ly/gQKeGA, http://zmagarka.livejournal.com/1095972.html), “black lists” were created (using social networks as well!), initiatives to issue complaints regarding governmental TV-channels in order to remove them from the European Broadcasting Union. There is another complaint from the post-election period against a doctor who gave Niakliaev, an ex-candidate, to the KGB from reanimation and he now has serious heart problems, and many-many more examples. People are really active via the web, but there is a huge amount of disappointed people on the streets now…

What would you suggest to young people in Belarus that want to take action during the follow up to the fraudulent elections?
I will suggest that they act with dignity and honor, use creativity, talk to people, and tell them the truth that they know. Use new media, as it turned out to be very useful in Belarus. Try to learn how to surf anonymously on the web for personal security, and try to fight with this huge machine of a regime in any means – through court, through international institutions. The best thing is: if you have gotten to this point where you start to fight with the regime and to struggle for democracy, then you have no way back, and there are more and more of us on the right side!

*Lustrations means to prevent former communists or former politicians and agents of a corrupt government from participating in the newly formed one.

Photos from the recent protests: