Maksim Winiarski In The Lithuanian Seimas: People Who Leaked The 2020 Protests Cannot Represent Us

Belarusians are left to themselves with all their problems.

Representatives of Belarusian public and political organizations met with members of the group "For a Democratic Belarus" of the Lithuanian Seimas Ruslanas Baranovas, Tomas Tomilinas, Richardas Degutis, reports the telegram channel "Basta!"

The meeting was addressed by coordinator of the civil campaign "European Belarus" Maksim Viniarski. The politician touched upon important issues that concern our compatriots. Here's the text of his speech:

- My name is Maksim Viniarski, I represent the civil campaign "European Belarus. I am a former political prisoner, I have been actively participating in the social and political life of Belarus since 1999. Before 2020, I spent about a year and a half serving administrative arrests for political reasons. For the 2020 protests I was sentenced to five years in prison. Three weeks before the end of my sentence, I, together with my colleagues, was expelled from the country without documents or any explanations.

I would like to say thank you very much for the hospitality shown by Lithuania to me and my compatriots at a difficult time for our people.

I would like to take this moment to raise a number of issues of concern to the Belarusian public. Having been released, I and many of my colleagues - former political prisoners - were surprised to see that for the last five years democratic Belarus has been represented abroad by people who before 2020 had not just nothing to do with the struggle for freedom, but were an integral part of the regime. They served the repressive bodies or, at best, simply lived a quiet life and preferred not to notice the repressions that took place in our country over the past decades. Moreover, many of them are directly related to the draining of the 2020 protests, to the surrender of opposition activists to repressive bodies.

Today they represent us in international organizations, meet with the leaders of Western countries. Therefore, the issue of communication, including with the group of deputies of the Seimas of Lithuania "For Democratic Belarus", is acute.

It would be fair, correct and effective to create a council of representatives of the Belarusian diaspora, which would ensure contact with the legislative branch of the Lithuanian government and represent the interests of Belarusian citizens in exile, as well as those who were actually expelled from the country. We would also like to call for a comprehensive audit of the activities of the office of Svetlana Tihanouskaya and its affiliated structures. Over the years, this structure has lost the trust of a significant number of citizens both in the country and abroad. If it had some grounds to represent the interests of the Belarusian people earlier, they are not confirmed by anything today.

Today, the citizens of the Republic of Belarus - both those who left the country and those who remain at home - find themselves left to themselves with all their problems: from the dictatorship with its incessant political repressions to difficulties with legalization abroad. Tihanouskaya's office declares its task to take care of Belarusians, but in reality the problems are not solved, but only aggravated.

Often some Belarusian citizens are denied residence permits in Lithuania because they have previously worked in state institutions and structures of the Republic of Belarus. At the same time, for some reason, no one was confused not only by the fact that Svetlana Tikhanovska was given $15,000 in cash by a high-ranking officer of the KGB of the Republic of Belarus, but also by the fact that she concealed this fact until the moment of publicizing the compromising video, which recorded the fact of money transfer. This alone testifies to the very strange, if not worse, behavior of Tikhanovskaya and her entourage.

Belarusians want to decide their own fate, not waiting for the office to remember them. Help those of us who find ourselves here to get direct contact to solve pressing issues and realize our legitimate interests," said Maksim Viniarski.

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