Time For Kindness

We all equally want freedom.

Christmas Eve is the best time for kindness. And not only in relation to people in prison, not only to patients with coronavirus, not only to the memory of the dead. This is the best time to be kind to each other.

After last year's fantastic unity, a moment came when people who walked shoulder to shoulder at the marches, stood together in couplings, collected money for fines and prison parcels, and ended up on opposite sides of the border. At first, the whole world rejoiced for everyone who managed to escape from repression. But as the number of people who managed to escape grew, the more often incredulous voices sounded: was this person really under threat? Maybe he made it up? Or even took the opportunity to leave? Then irritation was added to the distrust: who are you to say something from over the river, we heroically stayed here, and you fled, so now you don't have the right to vote. From the opposite side, at first quietly, and then more and more loudly, they began to snap back, and in the end, society, a monolith year ago, with common values and purpose, began to imperceptibly divide.

This is not yet a tectonic fault - more like, a small crack in the ground, hardly visible to the naked eye. And now is the time to close up this crack, throw some soil into it, trample it, cover it with earth, and plant flowers. Because it's the last to measure heroism and suffering depending on the point of being in space. The geographic coordinates of an individual at a given moment in time are the same objective reality, which has neither positive nor negative connotations, like, for example, the color of a person's eyes. And determining for whom it is harder, and who is more courageous by geolocation is the same as trying to determine it by the color of the eyes. Who is more courageous - gray-eyed or brown-eyed? Blondes or brunettes? Stupidity, isn't it? Yes, not just stupidity - delirium. So, to determine the degree of heroism by registration or just a point on the map is the same nonsense. And in general, it is immoral, in my opinion, to measure with a non-existent scale who is doing more to liberate the country from the occupiers.

For me, the Belarusian who lights a candle in the window in Minsk on the day of memory of Raman Bandarenka, knowing that he can go to the Akrestsin Street detention center for this, which he eventually does, and the one working abroad sending part of their earnings to the family of a political prisoner, are equally valuable. The one who left and the one who stayed. The one who believes and the one who is disappointed. The one who is still full of strength and the one who is tired. The one who is in prison and the one who is free. The one who goes out with the flag into the courtyard of his house in Homel or Mahiliou, and the one who unfolds the flag in Amsterdam, Warsaw, New York. The one who falls asleep at night in Belarus, not knowing what they will wake up from - from the ringing of the alarm clock or from the sound of the door being knocked out - and the one who falls asleep somewhere in Europe, writhing in pain and gnawing on a pillow from the inability to return. The measure of suffering is just as impossible to determine as the measure of heroism. We all feel equally bad. We all equally want freedom. We all love our country equally. We all equally want those who were forced to leave to be able to return home next year. So we still have more in common. A shallow crack should not become a tectonic fault. We've come such a long way. And we simply have no right to stop before an artificial obstacle, which we ourselves created.

So let's send postcards to political prisoners. Light candles. Make a wish. Call friends from the other side of the border. Let's talk about Belarus and our love for it. And about love in general, of course.

Christmas Eve is the best time for kindness.

Iryna Khalip, specially for Charter97.org

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