Address of Ms Irina Krasovskaya, leader of Civil Initiative "We Remember" :: Charter'97 :: News

We are present now in the auditorium that concentrates an immense amount of pain and suffering.

These pain and suffering cannot be compared with anything. This sort of pain comes when one lives through a loss of a loved one and the suffering accompanies the understanding of irreversibility of the loss.

Many of those present here lost one of their family members: husband or son, mother or wife, father or brother…

Others did not live through a personal tragedy but took our grief as their own. Such people help us guided by their clear conscience and limitless kindness. I would like to thank them now, in many respects we endured owing to their support.

Those present here today chose not to be locked in by their tragedy; they countered it with the strength of their spirit. They chose the road of struggle to unearth the truth about the destiny of their loved ones.

Each week in Buenos Aires mothers of those kidnapped by squadrons of death go out on Plaza de Mayo.

Hunger strikes of those whose relatives disappeared in different countries, from Chile to Jammu and Cashmere, do not let those responsible for kidnappings and assassinations sleep in peace.

After the massacre caused by the Chinese authorities in Beijing on 4 June 1989 brave women who lost their children created organization “Mothers of Tiananmen”. For many years this organization has been attempting to clarify the destiny of each and every of those who disappeared after the monstrous atrocity.

Five years ago a series of horrible losses among us, families of Belarusian politicians and public figures, occurred.

On 7 May 1999 former Minister of Internal Affairs Gen. Yury Zakharenko was kidnapped.

On 16 September 1999 Deputy Speaker of Parliament Viktor Gonchar and businessman Anatoly Krasovsky were kidnapped.

On 7 July 2000 camera man of Public Russian Television Dimitry Zavadsky was kidnapped.

Since then people holding the portraits of those disappeared in Belarus have been going out on the square in the centre of Minsk. Among the pictures they carry there is a photograph of my husband, Anatoly Krasovsky.

After the initial horror we came to realise that if we did not fight for our loved ones we would never know the truth about what happened to them.

In 2000, wives, relatives of missing public and political figures and members of general public got united in order to find the truth about the destiny of the four men and promote non-violent resistance in Belarus. Together we set up Civil Initiative “We Remember”.

The mission of the initiative is to unite the efforts of Belarusian and independent international organizations in establishing the truth.

Activities of our organization helped to win support for a US-sponsored resolution at the United Nations’ Commission on Human Rights in April 2003 that urged Belarus to find those responsible for kidnappings and bring them to justice.

The activities of “We Remember” encouraged the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe to set up a special commission on investigation of political disappearances in Belarus. One of the main achievements of 2004 is that the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights of the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) unanimously ratified a report on political disappearances in Belarus prepared by its spokesman Christos Pourgourides. Besides, PACE ratified a resolution and recommendations based on the report. It was the first time when the international community made such a decisive statement on the issue of the kidnapped people in Belarus.

All these activities led to the signature of the Belarus Democracy Act by US President George Bush on 20 October. The Act that has become the main document for the relations of the US with the Belarusian regime provides imposing sanctions against Belarus in case the Belarusian authorities do not stop pressure on opposition and independent media and do not investigate cases of politically motivated disappearances. A number of Belarusian high officials are banned from entering the US.

We travel across Belarus, meet with ordinary people in all regions; distribute independent information on human rights situation in Belarus. We made about 300 trips all over the world. We also participated in hearings held in parliaments of Lithuania, Poland, and Russia and met with representatives of American, Swedish, Dutch, French, Latvian, and German governments.

The civil initiative became an initiator of a public awareness campaign “We Remember” on the issue of human rights violations in Belarus including political kidnappings and detentions. Together with youth resistance movement “Zubr” we were organizers and active participants of street actions that were conducted for the purposes mentioned above. We publish and distribute booklets, brochures, books and special issues of independent newspapers about the crimes committed by the Belarusian ruler who was rightly labelled by the civilised world as “the last dictator of Europe”.

Practically all countries where kidnappings took place have authoritarian or totalitarian systems. Forced disappearances of people occur in South America, Europe, and Asia… This problem has no ethnic, cultural or racial slant; it emerges everywhere where human rights are ignored, where reason is replaced by force.

All of us fight for truth in our respective countries making every effort to change the situation. However, this is not enough: to win we need solidarity of all structures and organizations that handle these issues. In Belarus we need to raise the issue of those disappeared not only in our country but also in China or Colombia, and our colleagues in Uruguay or Chechnya should inform people there about the situation in Argentina or Burma. To achieve that we need to set up an information exchange network that would allow us to react in a timely manner to current events and support each other.

Our joint efforts only will allow taking the issue of forced disappearances to the level that would enable us to come closer to the truth about the destiny of our loved ones.

Joined and united we are strong!