Resolution “About Strategy “We are one people”

1. We, participants of the Conference organized on the basis of the National Platform of the Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum, representatives of wide public, evaluate extremely negatively the situation which has developed in the country after 19 December 2010, when the state of emergency was actually established in the country.

For the four latest months, we, the EaP National Platform of civil society, democratic parties and movements, all civil society, have failed to render any sufficient influence on the state and society in order:

• to debar the launch of the reprisals and pressure upon society, which all of us are undergoing right now;

• to stop in due time the started wave of repressions, to protect the rights of citizens of Belarus and human rights;

• to direct the public and political activity to timely rectify of the made errors and the wanton exercise of power.

We constate the weakness of civil society in Belarus, insufficiency of contacts and interaction of organized structures of civil society, its leaders, and experts with the wide public, with all people of good will in the country and with the population as a whole.

2. We are full of determination to correct the developed state of affairs, to use all the efforts and resources we have, our abilities, talents, and intellect, in order to overcome the separateness, disconnectedness, and insularity of structures, individuals, NGOs, parties, churches, and associations on the basis of a wide public dialogue:

• Dialogue inside civil society;

• Dialogue with political parties and actors;

• Dialogue with civil society structures and organizations which, for these or those reasons, stand aside of national problems, but do their socially useful work on the local sites and platforms.

Having agreed on common grounds about the joint purposes and solidary actions within the scope of the National Platform of civil society, we are entering the wide space of public life of the country and the nation.

We do not call to dialogue. We do dialogue!

We invite all the interested subjects to discuss our common problems and purposes, or, not having received any reaction to our invitation, we go to everybody with whom it is necessary to talk to and agree with.

We invite to dialogue youth, sports, social, entrepreneurial, trade union, and all other public organizations, scientific and academic communities, professional and creative unions, and churches of all faiths!

In our country, there are a lot of problems, common problems, which touch all and each of us, which need a wide public discussion at all levels and then solidary actions to solve and surmount them.

To get involved in the discussion and solution of the common problems does not demand any refusal from what everyone does constantly and daily in the zone of his/her responsibility.

However, even in these local spheres, there are a lot of the problems separate professional or volunteer groups, organizations and actors cannot cope with any more. It is necessary to draw attention to these local problems, too.

Things with the common national problems are in a too bad way.

Besides the authorities, in the country there are no other subjects of the national level, who could:

• solve the problem of political prisoners and observance of fundamental human rights;

• influence the policy of the regime in the field of international relations, in the sphere of economy, in the humanitarian area;

• stop the building of the Belarusan atomic power station, which is being carried out with infringements of laws, bypassing technical norms, and contrary to the will of inhabitants of Belarus and many other problems of the national scale.

Nowadays, we do not control our sovereign state, on the contrary — it does suppress and limits us.

In this connection, having agreed between ourselves within the scope of the National Platform, we DEMAND from ourselves and from other civil society actors a certain line of action, and we OFFER a way of achieving it:

• We DEMAND to stop egoism, subjectivity, and disunity - to build our relations not on what separates us, but on what unites us — the things we agree upon, we are solidary and unanimous about.

• For this purpose, we OFFER a dialogue and negotiations on the crucial problems of the present: from a termination of the wave of reprisals and release of political prisoners to a change of the political situation with the elections which raise waves of repressions each time in our country.

Only having agreed inside civil society and the whole democratic public, we will be able to DEMAND from the authorities to solve the problems our country faces together with us. DEMANDING from ourselves, we should KNOW HOW we can do it. DEMANDING from others, we should OFFER them a way of action.

3. As an OFFER to all actors and structures of wide civil society, democratic opposition, and all people of good will in the country, we offer the Strategy «We are one people». The basis of this strategy is stated in the document called “Strategy-2012: From a dialogue inside democratic forces to a dialogue with the regime”; during three months, it has been discussed in political circles, in civil society; it was criticized, supplemented, specified, and improved. This process is far from being finished. It is still necessary to have it discussed in various regions of the country and in the communities where the strategy has not been discussed yet.

Still, it is important to remember that discussing and specifying details and nuances, we should not lose time, and already now — ACT! To implement the strategy in the part we agree upon, which is accepted as a basis for solidary actions and consolidation.

In order to carry out joint steps, we need not «a perfect document», but a program of purposeful and effective actions. The actions we have already made, the actions which are being made now, and the actions all of us will make together in the near future. In the future we want for ourselves, for our country, for our nation. In the future when it will be possible to say «We are one people!» not as an appeal to unite, but as a fact.

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* The resolution is accepted by all participants of the Conference, except Valentina A. Matusevich (Belarusian party of women “Nadzieya”). V. Matusevich thinks that the provisions of the resolution implicitly admit that A. Lukashenka is a legitimate president, and she cannot share this opinion.

Download the text of the RESOLUTION