Sviatlana Alexievich to Lukashenka: Criticism of the president is not a criticism of the people

The Nobel laureate in literature commented on the words of Aliaksandr Lukashenka about her “pouring a bucket of mud on my country”.

 “When Lukashenka congratulated me, even if he was not the first one, I was happy, because I understood: after all, he is a politician. And suddenly here comes this commentary. I think he congratulated me then, because it was time before the election, there were plenty of various international commissions and he had to “keep a stand” before his people, and now he is free,” said Sviatlana Alexievich at the radio station Govorit Moskva (Moscow Speaking).

Let us recall that on October 24, while awarding the Russian composer and producer Viktar Drobysh with the Order of Francysk Skaryna, Aliaksandr Lukashenka said that he values him for his talent, but mostly “because you have never been ashamed of calling yourself a Belarusian unlike other creative people, even Nobel Prize laureates who have not received the prize yet but have already gone aboard and tried to sling mud at their country.”

“I will also speak about some of our ‘creators’, creative people, even Nobel Prize winners, who had barely received it when they left the country and tried to pour a bucket of mud on the country. This is wrong, this is not the opposition. This is absolutely wrong, because we cannot choose homeland, or parents, our mother. They are what they are. If you talk bad about homeland, if you are ashamed of it, then it is you who is a bad son,” – Lukashenka stated.

Meanwhile, according to the writer, she has never criticized the Belarusian people, but only political decisions of Lukashenka:

“I think that the President should be speaking about other things now. The people are waiting for the reforms, they have accumulated energy. And we have no clear idea at all: only to retain power. If it is an insult to the Belarusian or Russian people, I do not know where and what time we live in,” Belsat quotes Alexievich’s words.