Ales Pushkin: Everyone Reads Charter 97 In Bobr

People manage to bypass the blocking and receive alternative information.

Famous Belarusian artist Ales Pushkin, who lives in the village of Bobr of Krupki district informed Charter97.org about it:

– I and my father signed under the Charter97 initiative in the 1990s. When the initiative was only being created, 120 thousand Belarusians signed under it. And that means a lot.

In 1999, I received from the hands of deceased Aleh Biabenin the National Human Rights Award for Courage in Creativity.

As a democratically-minded person, I express my solidarity with Charter journalists and oppose the blocking of the site. People must have access to alternative information. Even in my village of Bobr, people come to me and ask: "Why have they blocked Charter? How to bypass the blocking? How to read the site?"

A lot of my fellow villagers – you can even say that everyone – read Charter-97. People are very pleased that the site even covers the events happening in our village. For example, on March 23, I put up a white-red-white flag over the roof of my house on Freedom Day, and Charter wrote about it.

People across the country are now preparing to celebrate the BPR’s 100th anniversary. Therefore, it’s not right to block Charter-97, it is an attempt to strike a blow against the preparation for Freedom Day this year. But people bypass the blocking and read the site. The most common people in Bobr – guards, agricultural workers – all of them read Charter. Common men of 40-45 years old discuss what is written on the site.

And I'm very glad that you manage to get across information to people, especially about the preparations for celebrating the BPR's 100th anniversary.