January 16 is Day of Our Solidarity :: Charter'97 :: News

The whole world is to be with us today. Thousands of people in Belarus and all over the world are to gather in the streets with lit candles in remembrance of the abducted leaders of opposition and journalists in Belarus, as a sigh of solidarity with political prisoners, with all those who fight for freedom and democracy in Belarus.

The initiative to mark Days of Solidarity started after policemen disbanded a protest rally dedicated to the memory of the abducted on September 16, 2005. On September 16, 2005 a memory of abduction of vice speaker of the Supreme Soviet of the 13th convocation Viktar Hanchar and a businessman and public leader Anatol Krasouski was marked. Protesters were also holding portraits of ex-Minister of Interior Affairs Yury Zakharanka and a journalist Dzmitry Zavadski. Policemen seized portraits of disappeared politicians and national flags from the participants. At that moment one of the Zubr leaders Mikita Sasim raised his jeans shirt as a symbol of resistance to dictatorship.

Since that time actions of solidarity are held in Belarus and worldwide on the 16th day of every month. Hundreds thousands of Belarusians and friends of our country all over the world light candles of Freedom in their windows, stage street actions of solidarity, attach jeans and white-red-white ribbons to their clothes, take part in flash-mobs and internet-actions. Church services are held all over the world for those who stay in prisons on Belarus, for the families of the disappeared oppositionists, for all those who fight for freedom and democracy in Belarus.

On January 16 actions of solidarity are to be held in Washington, Warsaw, Lublin, Krakow, Bialystok, Poznan, Wroclaw, Kyiv, St. Petersburg, Brussels, Stockholm and many other places.