July 25, Pozirk. If a person in Belarus speaks Belarusian, he or she “may be beaten, discriminated against, fired from work, or not hired,” according to a joint statement by Volha Zazulinskaja and Pavieł Barkoŭski.
Both serve in the opposition United Transitional Cabinet (UTC): Zazulinskaja supervises social issues, while Barkoŭski defends national identity. The statement addresses the testimony of Latvian citizen Dmitrijs Mihailovs, who was released from a Belarusian jail. Yesterday, he told Radyjo Svaboda about the discrimination against Belarusian-speaking prisoners.
According to Mihailovs, inmates are persecuted for writing letters and having conversations in Belarusian. He said he was hit in the stomach with a truncheon for defending Belarusian speakers.
The UTC members called the testimony “very revealing.”
“The perspective of an ‘outsider’ with different cultural experience, who clearly sees the absurdity of the situation, is especially valuable. He comes from a country where the language of the titular nation was under pressure but survived to become the basis of national identity,” they said.
“There is no doubt that the ‘Russian world’ dominates Belarusian prisons, and this is no accident but rather part of the system. The penitentiary system is a peculiar mirror of the state. Now, there is no place for Belarusian-speaking Belarusians, not even in prison,” they added.
This worldview dominates the thinking of the country’s rulers, Zazulinskaja and Barkoŭski said. They called discrimination and violence, including that based on language, “absolutely unacceptable.”
