President Aleksandre Lukashenko of
Belarus "is helpful to Putin, many state-owned enterprises
answer to the Russian Defense Minister. Belarus is less blocked
by sanctions than Russia, so Minsk supplies Moscow with many
products, as well as logistical support from the military point
of view. In short, Belarus is a kind of appendage of Russia."
This was said by Olga Karatch, a Belarusian journalist,
political scientist and activist for peace and human and civil
rights, last night in Trieste at a public meeting sponsored as
part of Euromediterranea by the Alexander Langer Stiftung
Foundation, Articolo 21 with Teatro Miela and Premio
Luchetta.Karatch will conclude today in Milan a tour of a number
of Italian cities that began in Rome to collect the Langer Prize
2023 she just won, returning to Vilnius, Lithuania, where she
lives in exile with her family after being imprisoned and
tortured in the prisons of the Belarusian regime.
Olga Karatch stressed that her country "acts as a military
rear guard for Russia, there is Wagner, instructors in contact
with Russia, and Russian soldiers wounded in the war being
treated in Belarus."The country, however, "is divided because
civil society is pro-Ukrainian.But just wearing yellow and blue
clothes can result in jail time, as happened to a teacher who
had a yellow and blue hair clip in her hair and was arrested in
class."Karatch heads 'Our House' (Nash Dom), an organization
that helps dissidents, conscientious objectors and people who
have suffered human rights violations in Belarus.The journalist
emphasized the great difficulty of life in Lithuania for the
thousands of people who have fled the Lukashenko regime."The
authorities consider these people a threat to national security
and aim to bring them back to Belarus where they risk death."
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