Former political prisoner blasts Belarusian opposition


According to a recent survey, about 65 % of young Belarusians are ready to leave the country and go abroad. Belsat TV asks Mikita Likhavid whether anyone is waiting for Belarusians there and whether emigration is promotive of finding a way in the world.

No heaven on Earth

In March, 2011 Mikita Likhavid, a 20-year old activist of opposition movement, was sentenced to 3.5 years of imprisonment in a maximum-security prison for participating in mass riots after the 2010 presidential election. For his steadfast demeanor in Navapolatsk penal colony he was repeatedly sent to a one-man confinement cell: the young man refused to respond to the compellation ‘convicted Likhavid!’ at the roll-call; he said ‘wrongfully convicted’ instead.

‘People think if they go to work abroad everything will be ok. But they do not realize that work is not the point: the want to leave so that they could forget Belarus like a nightmare <…> People are afraid of drab existence, it seems to them that the grass is greener in the West. But one can have it all only in fairy tales,’ he said.

Sound policy, unsound measures

Most Belarusian youngsters might dream of emigration, high salaries, etc Mikita Likhavid has a positive attitude to Belarus’ youth policy: ‘Its main advantage is non-cultivation of so called ‘liberal roots’. <…> No free love, soft drugs, all-permissiveness. The authorities are trying to save unity of morals by no means always using proper methods’.

Ghastly boredom of Belarusian opposition

‘[Their] obscure problems and ermanent talking about nothing, i.e. this bloody regime eating newborns with garlic, are not able to touch a nerve,’ Mr Likhavid explains. Opposition in Belarus fails to promote interests of the youth. ‘No organisation would declare: we don’t like a candidate’s program and that is why we won’t lead people!<…> Everyone is their own boss here: we have three parties for two Belarusians . If we work for a common idea, let’s work because each of us is practically schlepping aroung five youth activists. They are taken back and froth, back and froth, [activists] come to Vilnius, stay here for unknown reasons, lose 2-3 days at seminars. It’s an open secret that they go there to buy cheap clothes and beverages using democratic values as a cover. But it is nonsense! If it continues we will have to wait until the God holds that Aliaksandr Ryhoravich has had his innings, and there will be no change’.

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