19 March 2024, Tuesday, 5:27
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Recalling What Freedom Means

9
Recalling What Freedom Means

So, it has been the sixth day of trial against Eduard Palchys. The closed trial.

The people who “care” have been coming to the Minsk city court, six days in a row. They come to support a man who is standing trial for just one thing – for writing something in the internet. Or probably not only for writing – he is standing trial because he was actually read. You read him. You read him, but it is him on the felon’s dock.

I’ve been watching people reading, liking and commenting the “news” from the “court”. It can make an impression that all this is not serious, a sort of a virtual reality. However, everything is real: real bars, real handcuffs, real convoy. The prison term is also real – at the very best, it’s the term he is serving already (like it was with Dzmitry Paliyenka), but nobody knows what will happen in the worst case…

But there is one thing I know for sure: the people who read what Eduard wrote, liked it, commented, argued, but failed to come to his trial, failed to give up the virtual reality for once, remain partially guilty for every day that he spent in jail.

Last weekend, about a thousand Belarusians (or maybe even more) found at least two hours to watch William Wilberforce fighting for ban of slavery in the British Empire on a cinema screen. Still, no more than three dozen Belarusians managed to find time and strength in two weeks to demand freedom for Eduard Palchys.

The trial will be resumed on October 25, there will be another opportunity to recall what freedom means, and who is under trial for our “right to read”. To recall that you are not only “the Facebook society”, but the citizens of our country – the Republic of Belarus. And to come to the court building, if you care.

The trial starts at 10 a.m. at the address Dunin-Martsinkevich Street, 1-1.

Maxim Viniarski, specially for charter97.org

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