 Hello and welcome. My name is Bob Scheibel. I am the chairperson of Main Voices for Palestinian Rights and Main Voices for Palestinian Rights is a member organization of this fine organization Portland Media Center MVPR exists in order to educate not only the people of Maine, but also the politicians of Maine and the media of Maine about the Palestinian struggle for their human dignity and their human and political rights. Our ultimate goal or mission is by all peaceful means possible to achieve total equality freedom and justice for all people's living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Now we have a special guest today from Belarus and you may well be wondering why is MVPR inviting somebody to speak from Belarus. That's quite a ways away from Palestine. Well, here's why. Justice organizations and communities around the world have in recent years been increasingly speaking out and reaching out to each other to show their solidarity and their support because they realize that injustice in one place increases and encourages injustice in another place. Conversely when injustice is overcome in one place that encourages the people seeking justice in other places. So in this country, for example Palestinian rights groups such as Jewish Voice for Peace, Eyewitness Palestine, the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights have all had made a presence at places like Standing Rock to support Native American rights there and also after police violence against blacks in Ferguson, Missouri they were there to show support for African-Americans and Eyewitness Palestine has taken several groups delegations of African-Americans including one or two from Ferguson itself to Palestine in order to educate these African-Americans about Palestinian struggle and to show and the black people have wanted to go there to show their solidarity. So today the people of Belarus are struggling for some rights of their own and that is why we happen to have invited our guests because Main Voices wants to show its solidarity with the people of Belarus. So let me introduce our guest our guest is Igor Lipayev. Igor was born and reared in Belarus. He moved with his young family to the city of Atlanta about 22 years ago where he works as a software engineer. I came to know Igor through my wonderful neighbors Alexander or Alex Sasha Lipayev who also of course comes from Belarus and his wife Lisa who's from Ukraine but they live next door and I got to know something about what begin paying more attention to Belarus and talking with my neighbors and learning about what was happening there. So we begin talking about how we could help our people here in Maine know more about Belarus and they informed me well Igor is coming up to visit from Atlanta and he's very well aware of everything that's going on there now and he speaks very good English and so he would be a good one to be interviewed at Portland Media Center. So I want to say welcome. Welcome Igor to Maine. Welcome to Portland and welcome to Portland Media Center. Let's start out by having you tell us exactly where on the globe is Belarus located because a lot of our people may not know. Okay. Thank you Bob. Belarus is located in Eastern Europe. It used to be part of the Soviet Union and became an independent state when Soviet Union broke up back in 1991. So since then it's an independent country and geographically it's located between Russia and Poland. So and now the border with Poland is also the border with European Union the EU. Right. And we also border Latvia and Lithuania to the like north. And they are also part of the EU. They're also part of the EU and in the south we border Ukraine. Okay. So we are in that region that have been changing drastically since the fall of communism in both in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and but again unfortunately we are behind the actual democratic changes and this is something that we want to talk about. Okay. Yes. So that gets us to this and tell us why there are street protests and we'll come back a little bit later to the size of them and all of that but help us understand why are people protesting in the streets in Belarus at this time. Let's start with the current situation with power. President of Belarus Lukashenko is the first and the only president of independent Belarus since 1994. It took about two and a half years between the independence and people were working on a new constitution of newly formed independent Belarus and it had this position of president. The first one in history. So that would be as if George Washington when he became our first president then remained our president for 22 years. Or until now. Yes. Exactly. He's our first in our only. That's what happened and he managed to stay in power for so long because he basically was rigging the elections and falsifying the results but he didn't get any major opposition until now and this whole unrest, this whole protests they started since the 9th of August just over two weeks ago when the formal presidential election took place. Yes. And the vast majority of Belarusian people I'll put the number as high as maybe 80% were cheated. Their votes were not counted. Lukashenko announced his own victory with 80% which is the opposite to the reality and people this time they kind of they just got very angry. Said enough. Yeah. They said enough is enough and the only way in the authoritarian regime to make your voices heard is just to get out in the streets. Well now in this country which seemed like every couple of weeks we have polls coming out telling us who's leading who's behind. Were there polls like that prior to this election? No. There is only one official polling agency which is full of lies but people were running internet polls kind of independent internet polls. Of course they cannot be even scientifically correct or something because not everybody has internet but according to those polls or there were several of those Lukashenko had as little as 3% of support. Not even 30 or 40. 3%. That's why yeah he got a nickname Sasha 3%. I love that. Sasha 3%. Sasha 3%. Once you travel across Belarus and you know look around you will see a lot of these 3% just you know graffitis writings anywhere. So that might take like in this country the 1% has become a big term. So now in Belarus it's 3%. Sasha 3%. So this is how much. So I would put personally of course I'm not a scientist but personally I won't put his support maybe 20% that's the top probably even less something between 10 and 15%. This is his actual support which includes just you know people from government oh yes both local you know national and the like police and the army who are kind of forced to recognize him as president. Now is there any evidence that that voting was fraudulent and they were cheating and it's overwhelming. So monitors who are supposed to monitor you know the polls they were not allowed to see what's happening. In many cases they were asked just to leave the station to be outside. So the only thing they could do is just count people who walk in to vote. Right. There even there were pictures in the web somebody found half burned through ballots with the check boxes for Lukashenko opponents. So they just burned them. They just threw them away. The number of people who came to vote at the stations even those monitors they could count them. The official numbers were often as twice as big as the actual number of people who showed up actually. So if they if the people outside monitored okay 600 people came into this station today when those votes were then sent to the central area they recorded maybe 1200. Correct. So those were the cases. In many stations the number of people who voted was more than 100 percent. So they rigged it so much that the actual number who voted was more than the people registered. So some of those people clearly voted twice. Everybody came voted some voted more than once. Right. And even at the very highest level even those numbers were rigged at the very top which is the central election commission. Yeah. Actually the head of the central election commission is Lukashenko personal appointee. So the whole election process is ruled by Lukashenko appointee the person he appointed and it was actually illegal. You know that there was something roughly comparable to that in the state of Georgia not Georgia over there but Georgia in the south of this country when there was a race for the governor and I think the state attorney general who's supposed to oversee the elections was actually running for governor and he should have stepped down and turned that overseeing the elections of somebody else but he did not. And so that was something that happened. I'm from the state of Georgia. Yeah. That's right. I don't remember but it was something like that. I don't know the details. So it's sort of like the the fox watching the chicken coop so to speak. Well now let me ask you this question. Who who were the people running against Lukashenko. And it's a very unique story actually very interesting. So there were a couple of candidates according to the Belarusian law any person I think of the appropriate age can choose to run for president. And in order to be officially registered as a candidate that person should collect at least a hundred thousand signatures from anybody just in the streets. So there were like small you know pkp polling stations in the streets just gathering signatures. And Lukashenko of course was monitoring that process really really closely. So as soon as he saw a candidate getting more than a hundred thousand signatures two of those candidates were thrown to jail. So for for something they never did. And two of them are still in jail until this day. One candidate that oh okay those signatures then they they are sent to the Central Electoral Commission have to be verified. And one candidate out of four hundred thousand signatures they said that valid are only one hundred and seventy. So they threw away more than two hundred thousand signatures. But that candidate was still valid but he was in jail. But he wasn't okay. That kind of was in jail. Another candidate who was not in jail he got it about two hundred thousand. But they only said the valid is only seventy. Okay seven less than a hundred thousand. So he was moved away from the competition. But here's the most interesting story. I don't think it happened anywhere else in the world. One when a very popular person Sergei Tchanovsky he was a very popular blogger. He started running you know his blogs traveling across Belarus interviewing people just as we call like simple people all across the country who were telling stories about how poor they are that they have like no no future things of that nature. And he was it was all you know filmed and all over the internet. Not the kind of thing that an autocrat likes to have. Exactly exactly true. So when Sergei Tchanovsky has like a very strong personality like a national bone leader he wanted also to be a candidate. But he was temporarily jailed like administrative arrest. And even that formally was used as a reason not to let him to be officially because he had been because he was staying in jail at that time. So when his wife's Atlanta she had all the papers all the necessary papers for her husband. She came in to register him and was denied. Then she kind of something happened to her as she described it later. Then she said then register me and everybody was didn't know what to answer and they had to. So she was registered as a candidate. She had absolutely no political experience. She's basically a housewife. Yes. So she's just raising her two of her children. But she was officially registered as a candidate. And she became immensely popular in Belarus. People were standing for hours literally miles in lines to put the signature for her. To give her the hundred thousand. Right. And she actually managed to get enough signatures and she was registered the candidate. This is how it happened. Yeah. Wow. Okay. And so now she is the person then that many people think actually won the election. Correct. And she that I hear correctly she had to flee to Lithuania. Right. She was forced to initially she started to get phone calls threatened her kids. So initially she had her kids moved to Lithuania. And then when she came after the election day she came to the Central Election Commission to basically to open a case against fraud because for her it was obvious that her you know both for her were simply stolen. She was put very horrible pressure on by KGB in Belarus they still have KGB the Soviet style KGB with the same abbreviation. Okay. They were put enormous pressure on her but they let her also to flee to Lithuania. So currently she is in Lithuania but she is considered by many by the vast majority to be a president-elect. And since that time hasn't she declared herself to be a kind of caretaker leader in absentia or something like that until until new elections can be. Yes and actually her all kind of program that she announced before the election was she openly said I'm not a politician I don't want to be president I'm not that kind of person. Right. Yeah. What I want to do I want to be elected president and make everything that way that we can run free and fair elections in six months from now. Okay. So that all political prisoners be freed everybody who was forced to exile can come back to Belarus. Right. And we can have free elections without actual leaders. And this is what the vast majority of Belarusians voted for to have that situation. So she would want to be a transition. Right. She's like a symbol. She's I think 37 years old so young beautiful lady and she's a lady which is not very common in that part of the world for women to be in like high political positions. So all Belarus fell in love with her. So everybody wanted to her to be our new president. I personally would love her to be our new president. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And so she's still out of the country right now. Correct. And she confirmed she would not return while Lukashenko is in power because she simply fears for her life which is absolutely serious and we'll talk about that. Now how did yes how did Lukashenko he was initially I take it freely elected. That's right. Then how did he wind up taking or getting so much power. What did he do to get it. He changed the constitution that was yeah he changed the constitution which was only like three years old because it was new constitution for the newly independent state. So he was elected in the free and fair elections back in 1994. A year after the elections in 1995 he returned the old Soviet Belarusian symbols old Belarusian flag and the coat of arms. So that was his first huge step. So he brought back the flag for the Republic or the state of the Soviet Union slightly modified just slightly modified because he couldn't be exactly as it was because it was slightly modified with the same color same layout. And what he did he ran will call the referendum which was totally rigged. So formally people voted for that which in reality was not. Yeah. And a year later in 1996 he staged what's considered just a coup. So he changed the constitution. He again held the referendum. Our initial constitution Belarusian constitution was pretty fair. There was also this division of powers. You know. So the president was an executive branch. But in 1996 Lukashenko assigned himself the legislative power also. He writes laws in Belarus. So and that was as the result of this 1996 referendum which was also totally rigged. But since then he is the only all power is in him. All other institutions were destroyed. The parliament is like puppet parliament. They make no decisions at all in real life the same with the Supreme Court. Supreme Court almost supports what Lukashenko says. So whatever he does he's the only source of power. Now that so he's been in power for 20 something years. Correct. What has happened in the last year or so or two or three years to make people decide I assume earlier really elections are also rigged. Why have people come out in such numbers this time to protest. Lukashenko has been gradually losing his support. So even 10 years ago when there were very similar situation the we had elections in December 2010. They were also very similarly rigged. All independent candidates nearly all independent candidates for presidents were jailed then 10 years ago. Kind of a pattern in Belarus run for office you get jailed. There were also protests but they were on much smaller scale. And the reason is Bob that Lukashenko still enjoyed pretty wide support then 10 years ago. So and for a dictator to stay in power it's probably enough to have 30 40 percent of support close to 50 percent close to a half. So he stayed in power. Many people were kind of indifferent. They were okay with Lukashenko in power because the standard of living was not bad. You know they had personal freedoms. They could travel. You know they all got jobs. But in the decade since those elections many things changed. So economic situation worsened considerably. Many people today in Belarus have to work in neighboring countries because there are no jobs for them in Belarus. So they they don't move permanently but they have some sort of working permits. So they work in Russia and in Poland and there are millions that have to work with that. People barely see the families. They want an opportunity. I know in this country I forget who it was might have been James Carville who said to Clinton one time it's the economy stupid. It's the economy. So that seems to be true everywhere. So if the economy was looking weaker and people were suffering more economically they would begin to be not quite so pleased with their autocratic ruler. You're exactly right. So that was happening more. That's a major factor. The economical factor. And what about covid? Yeah he made a couple of other mistakes. So with covid he pretended covid doesn't exist. Oh sounds like America in the month of February March. But it happened throughout. So there was absolutely no quarantine. No restrictions. No nothing. And is it he the one that said just drink more vodka. That's what this is true. I hate to keep making these kind of crude analogies but we had a president. We have a president who once suggested drinking or somehow ingesting Lysol or some other kind of thing like that. So these autocrats sometimes have interesting approaches to disease. But this was Lukashenko say he said drink vodka go to sauna. Yeah and ride a tractor and ride a tractor. Well we haven't heard that one here. He has a background from a collective farm which is a Soviet style or agricultural unit. And the only thing he's good at is that. It's to be you know to tell people how to you know dig potatoes and he often does. He teaches people how to dig potatoes because this is the only thing he's probably good at. So yeah covid was another factor when people felt you know lied to and put their lives in danger. And so they felt that the government doesn't care about people anymore. So another factor was he had to raise the retirement age considerably. The first time it happened last in the Soviet Union under Nikita Khrushchev back in 1950s. So it was like first time in 60 years that the retirement age you know he added a few years to that. So all these factors and also he is a very from my point he is very weird personality. He's very rude. He calls his own Belarusian people bad names. Yeah so when he addresses people who protest he calls them bad names like rats and something like that. You mean people who protest him. He calls them rats and other bad words. Another main factor is since 2010 elections a younger generation grew up. So today we have younger generation people who are no different from American young people or European young people and they know what's going on around the world and our close neighbors especially Poland and Lithuania. They had to go through the same process. Lithuania was a former Soviet Republic same way as Belarus was. When the Soviet Union and Eastern bloc you know fell back in the late 80s early 90s economic situation in Belarus was better than that of Poland. Polish people would come to Belarus to buy things to do shopping because their economy was ruined there. In just probably decade and now it's a huge contrast the other way around. People go to Poland shopping because everything is cheaper there. The goods are better. The quality is better and Poland is a free country. You can go there you know enjoy all your freedoms. They have elections you know they elect their officials nothing like that in Belarus. So this all those factors added to people and also there's this simple psychological feeling just getting tired of one of the same phase to represent your country you know. We want somebody else we're tired of this guy. He's now he's not as charismatic and energized as he was 26 years ago when he was young. He was about 40 years old. Now he's like you know getting older and he's not like that anymore and younger generation simply doesn't like this person to be the president. Okay now what about where have people had all been upset about that. I think you told me that he came in and he brought the new flag. At one point he brought the old flag from the Soviet Union for Belarus and the flag that people like or the red stripe with two stripes white stripes on the outside. Were people upset about not having their own flag. Initially there was a relatively small you know part of Belarusian population who were fighting for the old national flag with white red and white stripes. I think we've got that behind us here. Yeah those are the colors that's exactly right. I can't remember if I said this earlier or not but your brother also has that flag flying on his back porch and we have our we have the Palestinian flag on our back porch. Yes and this national flag although not formally banned but the factor was kind of was banned. People could be arrested for just waving this flag. Is that right. Well you know another interjection here but autocratic kind of well Israel doesn't have a dictator well some people might think Netanyahu has become that but the state of Israel has sort of operated as a dictator to the people of Palestine and in Palestine in the West Bank you can be arrested for holding up a Palestinian flag so another kind of there's another sense of another link here. Yeah and so but more and more people gradually in time started to realize that this has to be our you know state our national flag because on the one hand it's historic it has you know centuries of history it comes from middle ages and actually it symbolizes like a white cloth taken to carry you know the injured from the battlefields and that's what left the stripe of red blood. Oh is that right. Yeah this is the origin and actually today it's again it again becomes the truth because we will talk about it. Well I wanted to talk about a shift to that now. What has what has Lukashenko's response been to all of these how big of the demonstrations been now compared to 10 years ago and what has he done in response. So demonstrations were much bigger this time and it started weeks ago even before the elections people were kind of showing the support towards Lukashenko opponents and it was all across Belarus for the first time I think for the first time in the history of the country was not only Minsk which is the capital in kind of sort of politicized but the protests were happening all around the country even in small villages just in the village there were 100 people there right two or three people who come out with the white red white flag and but in other major cities in Belarus there were thousands and tens of thousands so people came out after the elections 10 close to 100,000 I would say. Yeah I think I saw some pictures. Yeah there are some pictures of just squares and streets just thronged with people. Lukashenko's response was horrifying horrifying horrifying horrifying he ordered the riot police to not just to detain and arrest people but to savagely beat and torture them people were beaten captured brown to jail and tortured there for days and and we've got pictures right there are pictures to verify this there are pictures the bruises on their bodies yeah the bruises and you know suffering the stories of the people who were detained the total number of the detained people is close to seven thousand wow so nearly everyone in Belarus today has either has a person they know like a member of the families or a friend who was detained or they know something who had those relatives I personally I still keep in touch with my schoolmates yeah okay we have like a group that we chat about one of my schoolmate friend son was arrested and detained and for two days she had no knowledge whether he's alive or what happens for two days wow she didn't know can you imagine today oh yeah not knowing for two days whether your son is alive and well whether he has been tortured to death so oh that's awful well let me insert another parallel here when my wife and I made our first trip to Palestine in 2010 everybody you meet in the west bank has a family member who has been imprisoned and most of them have a family member or a friend who has been killed they say martyred so it's a very common and it's also commonplace because lots of young people go out and they throw their stones at tanks and all because of the of the occupation they get arrested in the middle of the night and are oftentimes young children as young as age 12 are taken to prisons and their parents may not know for days or weeks where they are so there's a it's an awful feeling we've met some of those people who've talked about I didn't know where my son was I didn't know where my daughter was you know for that amount of time now I think there were also some stories even of rape yes there are stories of rape even rape of men of grown-up men really yeah horrible stories people suffered immensely but let me point this out Bob all those protests and demonstrations were completely peaceful not even compared to what's going on around here in the US yeah right not even close there are videos and pictures of people protesting absolutely peacefully not single damage not just a single car overturned on a single glass but no nothing nothing like that and there are striking images of people collecting trash after themselves oh after the demonstration after the demonstration so they say that the squares that we came in to to protest were cleaner when we left in America people don't do that even after visiting this is striking national monument sites this is striking there are a couple of other pictures that you know one of the big crowds people would stand on benches just to see better they will they will take their shoes off to stand on benches oh really yeah there are people volunteers giving people like water and snacks yeah so there are also very good images the authorities in Minsk they shut down the power so the traffic lights wouldn't work the people volunteers would you know just direct the traffic and the protesters who were in thousands of sorry hundreds of thousands uh by some estimate there were as many as 500 000 people they would stop on traffic lights to to let you know the cars move on this is this is i want to make that you know we're so very very peaceful very peaceful weren't there even some people who were just bystanders or by-sitters that was unfortunately common in their videos of that too like people the uh the cyclists you know people who ride bikes they were just you know having a stop maybe having a rest having drinking some water just chatting and then this uh van with the riot police stops by about five or six or seven riot policemen full gear with the batons they come out start beating those people and throw and arresting them and those those horrible pictures happen all over Belarus so a very very peaceful nation Belarusians suffered a lot in the history uh every major collision or war would bring a lot of harm like the second world war for example there are numbers that either uh each third each fourth Belarusian was you know perished perished lost their lives during the wars and it happened throughout the centuries because Belarus physically uh geographically is located between superpower of russia and also superpower of germany and there were always these military conflicts and stuff like that so Belarusian kind of genetically they're very very peaceful they don't want any wars or anything and the current protest is not to bring care or so it's not to do something like that the only thing people want let their voices hurt you know let let us have the elections that that's what people want and i think that um Lukashenko in beating people so having them beaten so brutally he was hoping that that would scare other people away but then and make them go back home and stop but i am i correct that when the people were released from prison and they told their stories and people saw what happened to them that made people even more determined did it not yeah that's exactly what happened more people are now coming out to the streets because they were outraged and horrified with what happened to their kids mostly because the vast majority of those arrested and beaten were young people young peaceful people were who you know who mentally uh europeans uh 21st century and then they're raped and you know some of them officially six people have died during the process and about a hundred are not yet accounted for so there are rumors that they just didn't you know survive the torture and died so those and this is happening just next door to the european union just right there not in some remote region yes right there in the center of europe european nation with the centuries of history is just being brutally destroyed now what has russia's response been what is mr putin uh putin is sitting and waiting lukashenko actually called putin well several times i don't know the actual number of calls he made and all of them were asking to intervene militarily uh to do something putin did to ukraine but has putin criticized lukashenko no putin actually was one of the first world leaders to congratulate him with his winning the elections there were a handful of others putin was probably the first one of the first what about the european union what about the european union has some words not uh as strong as i personally i think the majority of the oceans want but at the very least they announced lukashenko persona non grata meaning he cannot even show up in any european country and they're working on personal sanctions against lukashenko himself and everybody else was responsible for rigging the election and then for the brutal and what they um was making him persona non grata have they gone as far as to say that if he does travel in europe he can be arrested for war crimes or i don't think they said exactly this but that is a possibility they could come to that they could they could uh the belarusian people want more support they want both the eu and the united states to declare lukashenko completely illegitimate okay he has no legitimacy okay i wanted to come to that okay what would you like for the u.s. government to do what would you like for mr for president why am i blanking on his president trump president trump what would you like for president trump i would like uh for for the americans and president trump to put a lot more pressure on lukashenko on his cronies to isolate him to deprive him of funding so he's running out of money so he cannot pay to to these you know uh crooks and uh riot police who are so cruel and uh formally announce him as a illegitimate person he's not representing belarus anymore he lost in the landslide and then what he did to the belarusian people he became like a criminal he uh he cannot be recognized as a representative of belarusian people anymore so and again the united states always stood by you know nations who are fighting for freedom now belarusians people are fighting for for their freedom and they've been brutally beaten and you know imprisoned and uh people belarus and myself we want american you know government to to be more strict on that and to say that openly and i don't think there was any official statement yet no i think i read where the secretary of state mike Pompeo issued a statement um a written statement condemning the elections as fraudulent but um the true test in this country of whether or not our leadership is really feeling strongly about something is the presidential tweet i think it's the first this is the first time in america that government policy has been indicated more by a tweet than by say a presidential address in the rose garden or in the oval office but i don't think there's been any presidential tweet yet condemning what's going on in in uh in belarus nothing i heard of no i would agree we we will get um well certainly get plenty of tweets and other things about um um criminal protesters in this country or criminal rapist people coming from from mexico but so far we've had no tweet about the criminal behavior of mr lucaschenka this is right this is right i haven't heard anything of that kind and let let me tell you bob that those arrests they still continue to this day people still get or especially people who became who become sorts of leaders like many manufacturing plants and factories they went from strike and partially not to the extent that it matters but they're kind of the number of those gradually growing so when there's any leader that emerges immediately goes you know to jail today so those are right yes those arrests they still continue they haven't stopped so they've they've curtailed some of the out in the street brutality but they're still arresting people more more uh secretly or more privately right arresting them that's true yes and or how are the strikes or did the um or the big manufacturing plants which are state owned are they um are those men and women working there men mainly i guess are they striking um partially as i said not to the extent that they i think they should yeah uh so for example there's a major um truck manufacturing plant and i think it has like 20 000 employees but only a few hundred go strike so insignificant number and are these people you think genuinely in support of him or is it a matter of being afraid to go out on the limb or they're under enormous pressure yes people people who don't go on strike they're personally told if you go you'll lose your job and that's probably the least the least bad thing that uh well it's it's kind of in Belarus it's it's a hard choice because having a job in Belarus is scarce if you lose your job you may have to go and work in russia as we talked about yeah so and historically what makes it even more difficult people of Belarus are so kind of disciplined for them going to work is the natural way of living their lives not going to work this is something that they are not used to i say so i i know that that will be a very effective tool in putting much pressure on Lukashenko just you know strikes but this is not at that scale yet although many many enterprises take part in that at least partially right but as of now it's not on that scale yet the protest though let me say that each sunday they gather enormous number of people both sundays that we had since the election we had only two sundays uh there were totally across Belarus there were between four and five hundred thousand people so half a million which is a lot for a country of maybe nine million yeah the total population is nine million so here in the united states and more specifically in main i will now sort of talk to our audience and say if you have been listening to this interview and you would like to help the people of Belarus then i urge you to place a telephone call to our two senators senator king senator collins um and also to our representatives in the first district representative uh congresswoman shelly pengrey and in the second district to jared goldman please our golden jared golden please um contact these people uh urge them to urge our government our leadership mr. Pompeo our president mr trump to speak out to isolate diplomatically mr uh lucaschenko and if we have means at our disposal economically like putting economic sanctions on Belarus urge our congress people to urge our government our federal government to do that these are ways that you could help the people of Belarus to get the same kind of right that you're going to have in just a few days a few weeks to elect your leadership well thank you Igor for being here today and bringing us up to speed and educating us on the wonderful little nation of Belarus that i've sort of come to love in the last week or two from talking with my neighbors and looking at the pictures of the wonderful Belarusian people thank you very much thank you very much both thank you for having me i'm having this opportunity to address your audience thank you very much so bob schiebel for main voices of palestinian rights saying have a good evening or day