INSPIRING SUNDAY STORIES

Belarusians Are Showing the Rest of Us What Self Governance Means

The power of the collective: stories of resistance and creative citizen-self governance in a dysfunctional dictatorship. Amandla ubuntu! Power to the humanity!

Image: Pawel Kuczynsky at Pinterest

Belarus — a country of less than 10 million people squeezed in between Russia on the east and European Union on the west. As if its people didn’t already have the odds stacked against them, they also probably have the most regulated country in the world. Some of the laws include:

• Belarusians are not allowed to keep more than two kilos of poppy seeds per household
• No earphones if you are standing on a platform waiting for your train
• It is forbidden to be in a state of intoxication at any mass gathering, so no beer at beer festivals? Only non alcoholic? hehehe
• And the star of all laws: clapping in public is allowed only if directed towards war veterans — special presidential decree (not sure if this one is true, it simply sounds too crazy, but people were arrested for clapping and that was the only way to protest that was left)!

Everything has to be state approved, and if it’s not totally in line with the ‘party politics’ it will not be approved. The only chance you have of doing…