Uladzimir Matskevich: "I CANNOT"

1. I cannot

I cannot only analyze and discourse any more. Everything that is happening now, appeals to conscience and heart. Mind and nous must yield precedence to soul and conscience.

The unmotivated cruelty and dirtiness of the regime have boiled over.

For several days, the country and the nation have run into barbarity and savagery.

And the most outrageous fact is that this cruelty and dirtiness are not a spontaneous reaction to some events, but a hard-headed and cynical policy.

It is possible to explain actions of the ОМОN during a critical situation on the street. It is possible to understand the quick temper of people in uniform and in mufti during a fight, or when they repress disorders.

But how to understand and explain the cold-blooded detentions and arrests of innocent people during the following days? How to justify the fact that the people who have absolutely nothing to do with the disorders, are being kept in the inhuman conditions - in the special prison cars, in the overcrowded cells?

Those who were beaten on December 19th, suffer physically.

Those who are in prisons now, are cold, hungry, and constricted.

Those who are freeside, feel ashamed, humiliated, and sick.

The nation is humiliated!

The nation is debased by the mendacity, violation of human rights, of the law, and of the elementary norms of decency.

I am humiliated as well. Like everybody else.

 
2. Lie

Nobody of those who were going to the Square, prepared any acts of terrorism, pogroms, and vandalism. NOBODY! The first who lied was Makei — he declared that pogroms and acts of terrorism were being prepared. Then, tens and hundreds of people joined this lie. These are those who are like provokers-Gapons led people from one square to the other one through the «green corridor». These are those who brought people to the doors and windows prepared for the pogrom. These are those who took the shovels and logs, prepared in advance, in their hands in order to break several windows. These are those who planted the bottles, grenades, gas cans, and armature in the mini bus. These are those who had carefully prepared this requisite, pouring gasoline in beer bottles, in their silent offices. These are the camera operators who were shooting the pre-planed scenes of the windows being broken. These are the journalists who show all this on TV and who write about it in newspapers. These are the teachers and ideologists who spread this entire lie in labor collectives and in educational audiences. These are perjurers in "courts"; these are judges themselves.

My God! How many people are involved in this lie! What do all these people feel? How have they slept during these several nights?

Add here the members of election commissions and the obliging observers who saw no frame-ups on the day of elections.

Thousands of people have to do unscrupulous things. Do they have to? Or do they do it voluntary?

I do not want to think that they do it voluntary! If to think so – then how is it possible to keep living? - when these people are everywhere: at schools, in hospitals and supermarkets. After all, it will be necessary to speak with them during parents’ meetings at school, to see their eyes in the metro cars, to face them in supermarkets, and to say polite phrases to them. How?

To pretend that there have never been these days in the life of the country? To forget about humiliation of the whole nation?

It would not like to think that Romanchuk and Dmitriev voluntary lied from the TV screens. Otherwise, I do not know how to behave when I should meet them!

What kind of charisma is that, what black will is it, which makes thousands of people forget about conscience and forces them to lie? To feign the pogrom, framing innocent people up, beating them, dooming them to prison.

Is it possible to justify all these people by the fact that they only executed the order? that they were compelled to do it?

Credulity is no better than participation in lie. Thousands lied, and millions have believed this lie.

How is it possible to believe it? Impossible. Therefore, those who believe the stuff they hear on TV and read in newspapers, lie too. The only thing – they lie to themselves. Provokers and journalists lie to others, and those who believe them, lie to themselves.

For several days, the nation is gripped by the total lie.


3. The squelched right

Hundreds of administrative trials have already taken place. Hundreds of people have been sentenced for what they did not do. However, there is no news that those who broke the windows, are punished!

Those who did ask to remain unprovoked and not to participate in the pogrom, are punished. Still, the provokers and script writers are not punished and are not named.

What can be worse for the right and law than punishment of the innocent and impunity of criminals?

Nothing.

What can be worse for the nation than such a débâcle of the law?

Nothing.

Now, it is impossible to trust any person in the militian form or in the long robe.

For two decades, in the country, there have been big problems with the right and law, but these few days have resulted in the situation when the right and law are crashed completely, nothing is left.

Right now, in the country, who defends the right and law? Who?

There is no institution protecting the law. It is not the militia — it is them among whom the provokers were hired to beat the windows and to plant the «corpus delicti» in the mini buses, offices, and apartments of the arrested people. It is not the courts where hundreds of unfair sentences are passed. It is not the Prosecutor’s Office which has not contested any judges’ decision. It is not the Constitutional Court which is silent. It is not the Parliament which is illegal itself.

Perhaps, there are, at least, individuals who are ready to defend the law?

In the state system, it is not possible to see any of such people.

And it is terrible!

And one should not be afraid of this fear! It must be realized. Fear is a normal condition of a person in the country where there is no right and law. I say, a person, not a citizen. Citizen is a legal category. Citizen is a person who is guaranteed that his or her right is observed. No right — no citizen. No citizen — no state.

So, what is there then? Who organized these false elections and who finished these elections by utter annihilation of the right and law?

Well, not the state! I do not know how to call it: junta, fascism? Something like that.


4. Humiliation of human dignity

There are not and cannot be any rational or pragmatic motives of all this lie, of all this barbarity and ferocity. The regime has disserve itself very much by having organized all that. The image of the country and the state is undermined. Processes of rapprochement with the neighboring countries are suspended. Many thousand people, including officials of the regime, are morally cracked.

What boots it?

Thus, all these actions have exclusively irrational motives.

What motives?

Only a sadistic desire to humiliate other people.

It is so mean!


5. The things I would not like to speak about now

Here are the things I would not like to speak about now - about the candidates and opposition. I had said enough about it before the elections. I do not have an ability to justify someone out of pity. If a silly politician has been beaten and arrested, I sympathize with his sufferings, but it adds no respect to him.

I will not speak about stupidity. It will be possible to talk about it when everybody is freed.


6. What is next?

I was mistaken at least once in my analytical reasoning and comments during this year. I did not anticipate any reprisals after these elections. There have been no grounds for repressions. But I am not able to predict the irrational.

I can admit that people have various imperfections.

However, probably, I underestimate some people’s rancor and suspiciousness, scoundrelism and insidiousness.

Perhaps, only these features can explain what has occurred and is still taking place: meanness, devilry, vindictiveness. Add here the fact that even non-guileful and non-wreakful people do not value their conscience and honor so much that they are ready to obey the scurvy orders easily.

But after all, conscience should say its word!

Well, if not conscience, at least elementary human sympathy and compassion!

It is Christmas time! Even the most vengeful and artful knave is given a chance to show something human - it is possible to proclaim amnesty. Just to free all the arrested people.

After all, none of them constitutes a danger to anybody.

It is necessary to release even those against whom criminal cases are being prepared. After all, it is precisely known that their actions have no crime structure. This is a political prosecution.

Ah, yes! Political. It means it is possible to bargain with Europe! As it was with Kozulin last time.

So what, the regime will do it again?

Is there a measure of villainy and wiliness?

Or, are they boundless, like Shakespeare said?

What’s next?

A normal human being with usual feelings, with lucid mind, cannot envisage behavior of people with measureless flaws.

I do not know how this situation will end now.

I do not know what will happen then.

I know we will have to live with all that.

And Lord forbid us to forget about all that as if nothing has ever happened!


7. Don’t be afraid of fear — it must be overcome

Fear and humiliation can be found in practically every human being’s life, every community, every nation. And unwisdom is incident to the cleverest representatives of humankind.

It is not important that all these are present in our life. What important is what we do with them, how we cope with them.

The devil and all, if we oust them from our consciousness as if they do not exist at all, have never existed, as if it does not happen to us.

It is very much Freudly, but it is not quite humanly.

It has occurred. It has happened to us. To me.

Do not be afraid. There is fear, but it is not necessary to be afraid.

The dictator has done it because he himself is afraid, and because he does need our fear.

And he needs even not our fear, but he needs us to behave being guided by fear.

While we should be guided by other things: love, a sense of duty, and honor.

Yes, dictatorship inspires fear. Any of us can be extrajudicially seized on the street and at home, arrested, and condemned. Any of us, unexceptionally.

Afraid?

Of course.

But calm down, dictators and those frightened by dictatorship!

There is fear, but we shall do what we have to do. We will love what we love. We will sympathize with those whom you are afraid of.

Not because we do not know the feeling of fear, but contrary to it.

It is you who are guided by fear! Be afraid! There are things you must be afraid of.

You will never be loved — such people are not loved. This is to be afraid of.

Nothing threatened you on December 19th, but you were afraid so much!

While the people who came to the Square, were threatened by you. Three regiments of way too much armed and prepared fighters did threaten the peaceful people who nonetheless came to the Square. What did they do it for? Was it reasonable or not? is another question.

However, there were fear and threats, but they still did come and they were not afraid.

You were threatened by nothing, but you were afraid.
Be afraid.

And we will not be.

Your dictatorship is immoral, pathetic, and disgraceful.

And it must be liquidated.

Right now, we do not have enough forces. Yes, it is also true, we do not have enough wit, either!

But we will not leave. We love our country au contraire to the humiliations you make it suffer.

We will not beat and destroy you. It is you who out of fear seize the innocent and beat the non-accessorial.

But we are not afraid. If it is necessary, we will judge, and the results of trials will allow us to punish only and exclusively those who are guilty. If you are guilty, then you must be afraid.

Still, you can stop being afraid.

Just stop executing criminal orders. Stop lying, stop infringing the law, stop humiliating people. Remember that you have conscience, human dignity, and human rights! You are born with them. And you can use them. You just have to start using them.

And to begin with — stop being afraid!