They Don't Like Rygorich Even For The Money

Kurmanbek won't come to the next roll call either.

Do you remember the boy Ilya from Riga, who interviewed Lukashenko at the Slavonic Bazaar in 2022? You must have forgotten. And how not to forget, if propaganda does not remind about him. Well, I'll remind you myself: Ilya Karoza, who came to Vitebsk with his grandmother - the founder of the children's TV academy in Riga - asked Lukashenko a question about the formula of success. This fact, of course, was the main news of the state propaganda.

In one of the TV spots, his enterprising grandmother, Nadezhda Bukharova, appeared next to the boy and complained to Lukashenko that now, after the interview with dear Alexander Grigorievich, big problems await them in Latvia, even if you don't come back at all. And then, as it always happens in TV, a magic wand is waved and the Riga family lives in Vitebsk, Belarusian passports are handed over to all of them in a solemn atmosphere two days after they have applied for citizenship, Lukashenko orders the Vitebsk executive committee to ensure the delivery of grandmother's equipment from Riga to Vitebsk. Ilya becomes a Vitebsk cadet, which is again reported by all state publications, and the grandmother promises to open a children's TV academy in Vitebsk and in all regional cities of Belarus.

That's the end of it. There are no more stories, interviews, stories about the young soldier's combat successes and reports from the opening of the TV academy. Actually, there is no academy at all, neither in Vitebsk, nor in other cities of Belarus. But here's something curious: in November last year in Dubai there was held a certain contest of young talents Golden Palm with an international jury. Nadezhda Bukharova was also on the jury. She represented Latvia. I looked at her page in social networks - all photos from Riga, after she moved to Belarus. And nothing - from Vitebsk.

In 1998, someone Jurgen Graf escaped from Switzerland. He called himself a "revisionist," and his life's work was Holocaust denial. He claimed, for example, that the Cyclone-B could not even kill a fly, and that during World War II not six million Jews were killed, but "only" 300,000. In short, he was sentenced to a prison term in Switzerland, and Graf rushed to Belarus - the country of freedom of speech and unrestrained glasnost. And recently I learned that in January of this year he died, but not in Belarus or even in Russia, but in his native Swiss Basel, where he returned in 2018. That is, Graf simply found a place where you can be a Nazi without fear of being held accountable for it and sit there for exactly 20 years until the statute of limitations on the criminal case expired. And as soon as the statute of limitations expired - rushed to Switzerland, leaving the birches and swamps without the slightest regret.

By the way, for a long time nothing has been heard about Evan Newman - an American who participated in the storming of the Capitol in 2020, and then fled the United States. True, at first he did not go to our "island of stability" at all, but to Ukraine. And only when he learned that Ukraine and the United States have a treaty on mutual extradition, he quietly fled to Belarus, which has no such treaty. In Belarus, he was granted refugee status, and his certificate was handed over to him, as well as passports to the Karoz family, under TV cameras with subsequent stories in all news programs. And six months ago, in January, Donald Trump pardoned the participants in the Capitol storming, including Newman. Where is our refugee now? I'm willing to bet he's long gone, and there are no memories of our safe and secure country left. As well as the desire to return someday to this marvelous quiet harbor, wharf and blubber.

There are only two motives for foreigners who declare their love for the dictatorship and come here to live: either to find a place with a dubious reputation, where you can sit out criminal charges until amnesty or expiration of the statute of limitations, or a cold-blooded calculation that in exchange for a public demonstration of love for Lukashenko, money, houses, positions, benefits will pour out of his pockets. All this is, of course, trade, prostitution, fraud, but not love for Belarus, and certainly not for the barrel-shaped mustachioed uncle. If things didn't work out with the uncle, you can go to Dubai to represent Latvia in the jury of the contest. Or you can run home as soon as the clock struck midnight and the statute of limitations expired.

What can you do - they don't like Rygorych even for money and guarantees of safety. I suspect that even his friend Kurmanbek will not come to the next roll call.

Irina Khalip, especially for Charter97.org.

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