Dear people of Belarus,
Ladies and Gentlemen on the streets of Minsk,
If we can believe the pictures and reports on German television, you have been in resistance against the officially re-elected President Alexander Lukashenko for a week. Demonstrations, strikes and cruel police violence against opposition members appear to be taking place everywhere. Citing the opposition, newspapers in Germany report that the election in your country was neither free nor fair. The official election results are therefore grossly falsified, the overwhelming majority of Belarusians are in favor of the opposition candidate and the „last dictatorship in Europe“ is about to fall. The EU and the USA are selflessly supporting you in this.
We cannot check or evaluate these statements. Is it the truth? Or is this grossly exaggerated in order to „crack“ Russia’s last strategic ally in Eastern Europe and expand NATO further east? Keyword: Kaliningrad and „suwalki gap“. We do not know it.
Nor do we know what to make of the US troop transfers to your country’s western border. One thing is certain: many people in Belarus are apparently dissatisfied with the president’s policies. Why you are dissatisfied, one learns hardly or far too little in our media. The reason for your dissatisfaction does not seem to matter at all as long as the anger of the street is directed only at Lukashenko and „the system“. For you, dear citizens of Belarus, this could be a first indication of how calculatively the EU supports your „freedom struggle“ and how little it is about your interests or your dissatisfaction in times of crisis.
What you can expect in Belarus after a more or less „peaceful revolution“, you can certainly study in detail in almost all other countries in Eastern Europe. Get information about the liquidation of state enterprises, mass layoffs, collapse of collective farms and farms, mass exodus from the countryside and the death of villages in Ukraine, Moldova, Romania, Poland … Compare the disintegration of the social infrastructure of Daycare centers, hospitals, old people’s homes and the consequences for life expectancy, alcoholism and neglect …
In return, you will certainly get new oligarchs in the new freedom who will compete for power with their own television stations, publishers and parties. You can choose another one every four years. As you know, nothing changes as a result. By the way, the academic elite are leaving their homeland and their families to work a lot in Germany or Great Britain in hospitals, in industry or in the IT sector. The rest of the population can compete with migrant workers from Poland, Ukraine or Moldova for who is exploited and made sick as asparagus diggers or slaughterhouses, cleaning ladies and prostitutes in German companies and brothels. You can also find out how Eastern European migrants live in Western Europe, how they are treated if they lose their jobs and homes,
Finally, a word on the subject of free elections. Unfortunately, we know our way around: In the exemplary democracies of Western Europe, the following things are considered „without alternative“ and are not available for selection: the property relations with billionaires and beggars, unemployment, work that makes you sick and depressed, poverty and exploitation Eastern European migrant workers, deportations etc …
Incidentally, it is not free elections in Minsk that decide whether they can be one of these happy migrant workers in the future, but Berlin and Brussels laws on the free movement of workers and the not freely elected personnel managers of Western companies. The focus here is not on your needs and worries, but on the need of large capital for cheap and willing workers. Incidentally, this need is likely to be met in times of crisis …
We believe that you are striving for a better life and we find it understandable. It is doubtful, however, that these free elections will be of use to you. One thing is certain: the freedom you are fighting for will not be your freedom. Because in western democracies you can by no means choose whether to keep or lose your job, whether there is a new crisis or an economic cycle, how much the money you earn from your work, how much the rents are rising and so on. As is well known, all of this dictates „the market“ or the competition between companies, banks and speculators.
In free elections based on the Western model, you cannot decide whether you would prefer to retire at 63 or 67 and whether you can live off this pension at all. You can’t even vote on whether or not you want a new war with Russia. Freely elected politicians decide all of this „without alternative“ for their people.
Therefore, do not demand free elections based on the Western model. Do not follow pro-western opposition candidates. Don’t let yourself be drawn to the NATO cart! Don’t let freely elected politicians and capitalist corporations dictate your living conditions! These don’t get any better. Do not conquer parliamentary seats and presidential palaces. If you want to avoid the fate of wage earners in other Eastern European countries – conquer the democratic power of the working classes over the economic and social living conditions in your country. Make councils!
With best regards,
Oppositionists from the Ruhr area (signed Armin Fischer)
source:
https://www.heise.de/tp/features/Offener-Brief-an-die-Protestierenden-in-Belarus-4872348.html
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