The first fights with police in the summer of 2020 rekindled the hope within Belarusian society that a world without Lukashenko and dictatorship was possible. We, who were raised with the idea of peaceful and obedient masses, finally became part of an uprising against oppression that began to rise without any help from the outside. Little did we know that the blood spilled in different cities on the first days of the election would continue to be running on the streets of our neighborhoods, coming from prisons and police stations. Back then we couldn’t have imagined the tanks of the “Russian world” rolling through the streets, bringing death and destruction to cities of other people who also dared to dream of freedom and fight for it.
Five years later, many of those who fought are now being tortured in the regime’s prisons. They are still hoping that we — those who left before we were caught — will return and break the locks on the cells, setting them, us, and our home free from the unbearable weight of dictatorship. Five years later, we still remember those taken from us by the violence of the Belarusian and Russian regimes. We remember those who gave their lives to stop the war machine that tries to roll through the villages and towns of Ukraine, hoping to bring back the Empire back. The Empire that we learned to hate with the milk of our mothers.
In times like these, it’s easy to succumb to desperation and hopelessness. But we fight, and we fight together! We make the Belarusian regime and the Russian empire afraid of the people from the villages and towns of a country they thought would obey them. And let’s make no mistake, we, those who saw the tyrant walk of the stage when the workers shouted at him, will never forget that dictatorships and empires fall no matter how much blood they are ready to spill before becoming history. And today, we make a promise to ourselves and to generation to come, and we encourage you to join us in that promise – we will not rest until belarusian dictatorship and “russian world” are destroyed.
Until all are free
Anarchist Collective “Pramen”
