Chair of the Rada of the Belarusian People’s Republic Ivonka Survilla and politician Zianon Pazniak congratulated Belarusians on Freedom Day. Today marks the 108th anniversary of the proclamation of the Belarusian People’s Republic.
In her address, Survilla noted that on March 25, 1918, Belarusians declared to the world that they were casting off the last yoke of state dependence imposed on their country by Russian tsars.
“It was from Moscow that orders came to destroy the national creative and scientific elite in Kurapaty and to eliminate the hardworking peasantry. The aspirations of Belarusians for freedom and independence of their land were consistently suppressed. We had to endure both a physical and a spiritual Chernobyl. And the brief period of national revival was halted by Moscow’s appointee Lukashenka,” she emphasized.
She also noted that in 2020 the Belarusian people reminded the world of their existence, as hundreds of thousands of Belarusians took to the streets under white-red-white flags.
“If Moscow had not intervened again, we might already be living in our free country. And we would not be fighting today for the release of thousands of political prisoners who are still behind bars in Belarus,” she added.
“Do not let anyone call you aggressors against a neighboring country. We are an old European nation; our place is in democratic Europe, and only when we become independent from the so-called ‘elder brother’ will we take our rightful honorable place among the civilized nations of the world. One wants to believe that then neither Moscow nor terror will extinguish the torch that we will carry forward in tight ranks,” she stressed.
In his video address, Zianon Pazniak emphasized that Freedom Day represents the victory of the Belarusian national idea.
“All those uprisings of the nineteenth century, all that struggle, all those sacrifices made for independence and freedom of Belarus culminated in success on March 25, 1918. This marked the victory of the Belarusian national idea. Everything connected with the independence of Belarus, we Belarusians must celebrate throughout the world. This is very important because these holidays unite the Belarusian nation. They strengthen our solidarity regardless of which parties we belong to or how we view different issues and policies. But independence and freedom unite us all,” he said.
He noted that Russian Bolsheviks in 1918 did not allow the Belarusian People’s Republic to develop, but independence cannot be destroyed. In 1991, a declaration of independence was adopted.
“The Russian plague must be destroyed. This is a plague that threatens the entire world — Belarus, Ukraine, and all of Europe. Fight, brothers, fight, and victory will be ours. I congratulate us all. I congratulate us all on this great holiday and on our hopes. Because only there, in Belarus, does our bright star shine. Only there is our home, our happiness. And so we move closer to this happiness and fight for it,” he said.
