Lukashenko’s Regime Summons Nobel Laureate Alexievich for Questioning
On August 26, Belarusian investigators summoned Nobel Literature Prize victor Svetlana Alexievich for interrogation over her connections with a new opposition coordination council, clustered against Alexander Lukashenko.
Alexievich held an interview with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty where she criticized Lukashenko and urged him to leave the post immediately to prevent a bloody civil war. Alexievich also stated, after a major police crackdown on peaceful protestors by the regime, that “the authorities have declared war on their people.”
The Nobel prize winner spoke directly to the president and commented on the situation in Belarus. “Leave before it’s too late, before you have plunged the people into a terrible abyss, into the abyss of civil war, […] nobody wants blood. Only you [Lukashenko] want power. And it’s your desire for power that requires blood.”
International organizations and prominent individuals also reverberated the detainment of the Nobel laureate. The world is calling on Lukashenko to stop intimidating intellectuals opposing him with courts and jail time and to overall halt any action that violates expression of free speech. Yesterday, it became known to the media that Svetlana Alexievich will not be collaborating with the investigators.
These latest developments were also officially responded to by Georgian publishers, “Intelekti” and “Artanuji”. In the letter, the publishers are supporting the Nobel laureates fight for freedom and the need for progress in her country.
“We, the Georgian publishers of Svetlana Alexievich, ‘Intelekti’ and ‘Artanuji’, are supporting our author, the winner of Nobel literature prize, and an individual who expressed the realities of Soviet and the Post-Soviet heritage to the world, in an unembellished and impressive way. Today the author of “Voices of Utopia” is the target of the system herself, the system whose victims were defended and protected by her for decades,” reads the supportive letter.