Sunday, March 26
Election day in Minsk, a report of a witness (one of the hitch hikers)
"We are on our way to another demonstration to show our support with the oppressed in Belarus. This time we do not feel afraid like we did last Sunday in Minsk. We’re going to protest against the falsification of the Belarusian elections in Amsterdam. I realize that today we don’t have to fear the police. Last Sunday in Belarus we did.
On the day of the elections we were in Minsk. We were surprised that we were able to enter the country. A few minutes before we left Warsaw for Minsk we heard that our hitch-hiking campaign had been on Belarusian state television. We held a campaign for freedom of expression in Belarus in the Netherlands, Germany and Poland. They told a slightly different story that we were campaigning for Milinkevich along the road. We supposedly even caused a traffic jam! After this news we didn’t expect a warm welcome at the border. Our European Passports did make the border control nervous. However, they only looked at our luggage shallowly. Such a relief! Unfortunately this didn’t take long. After being in Minsk for almost one minute there were four police men standing in front of us. We acted like stupid tourists on their way to Ukraine. After some internal discussion in Russian, they let us go.
At first sight Minsk looks like every other city on Sunday morning. There are few people, it is quiet and only the McDonald's was open at eight o’clock in the morning. The big difference is the fact that there are twice as much “fur caps” as there are citizens. And of those citizens we did not know who was KGB and who was not. There were for example many cleaning people. I have to admit that Minsk is a clean city, but this looked suspicious. Or am I getting too paranoid? Luckily, the police didn’t bother us anymore. But we still had the feeling that we had to be really careful. Therefore we did not use words like Milinkevich, revolution, demonstration or Amnesty. It was a strange feeling that we had to keep quiet after 1, 5 week of protesting. We experienced the limited freedom of expression for ourselves. However, we only did during just one day...
A Belarusian guy told us in veiled words that he got sick of Luka’s regime and that he certainly would go to the demonstration. He expected a lot of people. He was happy that foreigners from all over Europe came to Minsk to show their support. The fact that he was constantly looking around while he was talking to us made clear that we weren’t the only ones who were scared. By coincidence we also met a German journalist who had actually seen our campaign on state television. He was quite sure that it was our action. He also showed us the message that all young Belarusians received of the government to warn them not to go to the demonstration. A free translation: “Foreign terrorists will plant bombs on the October square during the demonstration next Sunday. The police will react on everybody who demonstrates with flesh eating dogs and gas that will make you shit. All the demonstrators will be considered terrorists and can go to jail for fifteen years”. This made us really look forward to the demonstration! A foreign documentary maker told us about disturbances of the KGB. They tried to prevent her from finding a place to sleep. We also met a foreign Amnesty member who seemed less careful than we were. He dared to say a lot in the streets and bars. We were glad that he was back safe in Germany at the moment that so many people got arrested last Friday. Someone of the campaign team of an opposition candidate we met was really pissed off, since they menaced to completely delete the website of one of the opponents of Lukashenka.
At half past seven we gathered in front of a church to go all together to the demonstration at eight. Everybody was asked to enter the square at the same time to minimize the chance of police actions. Standing in front of the church we saw a scary amount of busses packed with police men driving by. Entering the square we already saw thousands of demonstrators. Until that moment we only met young opponents of Luka. Here we saw children, youngsters, grownups and elderly. It was really impressing. We planned to stay outside and only tape the demonstration. When we were there we could not do anything else than entering the demonstration. It seemed less dangerous to be inside, since the police stood aside. The atmosphere was so incredible that we wanted to stand in the middle. We thought that we could also show our support by joining the demonstration. The crowd kept growing and growing. There were ten thousands of protesters. They were carrying flags of ZUBR and Milinkevich, and the –forbidden- old Belarusian flag, while they were shouting Milinkevich’s name, ‘freedom’ and ‘long life Belarus’. There was a positive vibe and the situation did not get frightening or aggressive at any time.
We tried to get the whole demonstration on tape, which was hard at some times. We didn’t want to film the faces of the opponents. Since they might get them into trouble when our DVDs would be confiscated. For this reason we also tried to stay away from the police. Actually this wasn’t so hard, since the police was quiet invisible during the protest. Although we knew they were there. After a few hours in which we interviewed some demonstrators and filmed Milinkevich we left for the night train to Brest at the Polish border. At that moment our nerves returned. When they would see the images that we shot, we couldn’t say anymore that we were tourist that just passed by. I put the DVDs in my underwear and we headed off for the free world. At the station there was an incredible amount of policemen. Luckily they didn’t do anything. We slept well in the train and were ready for the border control in the train station in Brest.
In Bialystok we already cleaned out our bags and threw away things like jeans ribbons, Belarusian flags and leaflets with information of our campaign. At first sight they seemed quiet nice. However, the word ‘Minsk’ was a trigger to search our bags thoroughly. We had to show the images on our video camera. ‘Unfortunately’ the battery was low and he couldn’t see anything. Of course we already had hidden the DVDs. They looked really well for them; they even took some music cds to look whether there was some illegal material on it. While they were listening to David Bowie the images of the demonstration stayed in our bags. Meanwhile they found some interesting information about the campaign. Apparently we didn’t clean up to well… They thought it was interesting. They even took it to the back. At that time we didn’t feel so well. Luckily they came back in a positive mood. The woman who was still searching our backs wasn’t so sure, but she lost the discussion. Although they probably knew that we were campaigning for human rights they did let us leave the country. To me this seems a good sign.
I felt really relieved that we were back in a free country when we entered Poland. It is hard to imagine what Belarusian activists and Belarusians in general have to go through. We were only there for two days and we were really getting nervous of watching out for the police, keeping quiet and watching what to say and especially what not to say. Now we are back in The Netherlands. Tonight we are going to camp on a main square in Amsterdam to show our solidarity with the oppressed in Belarus. I am really glad that we can without fearing the police. I hope that Belarusians will also be able to do so really soon…"
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