"Dzen Voli" (Belarusian) - means freedom day, it happened over the weekend in Belarus: March 24th is day of declaration of the Belarusian Republic, where freedom is still hard to come by.
My uncle can be seen organizing the crowds for the march here :
Amazingly, this time the demonstrators were allowed to proceed with planned activity. With no resistance from the police, one would think that this was a sign of progress of democratic practices, but in reality it showed a simple realization by the leadership of the country that these marches have little effect on dictatorship at hand and therefore are viewed as futile. I am not certain what the peaceful solution is -- it seems unless we have our own "Belarusian spring" the world won't follow. Although by example of Orange revolution next door in Ukraine and watching the Arab countries, also having visited Argentina this year, the cultural and habitual ties to dogmatic regimes are hard to break. I call it political and burocratic Stockholm syndrome.
Meanwhile in NY, I was hiding on my sofa from erratic spring elements, and catching up on, 3 years too late watching the (talking about Stockholm!) swedish Milennium series -- The Girl with a Dragon Tatoo, etc. in film the justice prevailed, I was entertained, but somewhere during the viewing a disturbing reminder popped up: this screenshot is a dialogue from the film, sadly bringing Belarus to pop-culture level for the notoriously consistent human rights and constitutional violations.
That day in Belarus wasn't of freedom, but rather a reminder of the lack of.
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