De Balie's video: The Freedom Lecture: Belarus

On August 9th, thousands of protesters took to the streets in Belarus calling for free and fair elections. This marked the start of a broad protest movement opposing the authoritarian reign of ‘Europe’s last dictator,’ Alexander Lukashenko. Tonight we honour the brave people of Belarus and stand in solidarity with their cause. In this Freedom Lecture, several Belarusian voices share their story with regards to the current events in Belarus. Belarusian artist Tasha Arlova, born in 1989 in Vitebsk, Belarus will give the Freedom Lecture. She works with photography, performative videos and short films. She is also one of the founders of the Second Thoughts reading club dedicated to “a collective exploration on Eastern Europeanness”, co-organizer of exhibitions dedicated to Belarusian protests. Currently on her final graduation year in Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam. About the protests right now and the role that art plays in them we also speak online with Yauhen Attsetski, a Belarusian photographer based in Minsk, working mainly in the field of documentary photography. As a photographer, he’s worked with UNDP, Red Cross, UNICEF Belarus, Sapiens Mag, and TIMER Mag. Co-founder of the school of photography fsh1 in Minsk. Nasta Zakharevich holds a master in philosophy and is an independent belarusian journalist. She will give us an update on the situation at hand in Belarus. She writes about ecology and urbanism for Belarusian Green Portal, covers protests for the agency EFE and has her own blog about feminism and social issues at Radio Liberty. This september she was kidnapped, then officially detained and spent 7 days in jail for covering protests in Minsk. Caroline de Gruyter will provide us with a broader view on the geopolitical field with regards to Europe, Russia and Belarus. She is a journalist and lecturer based in Oslo. She is a European Affairs correspondent for the leading Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad and a regular contributor to Carnegie Europe. She was posted to Brussels twice and spent more than twenty years covering Europe. With Pieter Omtzigt we will talk about the power of sanctions, what the Netherlands can do to support the Belarusian people, and what the EU should do.