On Sunday, Zhanna Charniauskaya, a Belarusian living in exile outside Chicago, plans to march down Michigan Avenue for all those returning home who can’t.
Charniauskaya, 55, will march for her former neighbors in Minsk, the country’s capital, who were imprisoned: Ales Bialiatski, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate she met in Chicago, who has been imprisoned since 2021, and the thousands of ‘others that are found. detained in penal colonies with political charges, according to human rights watchdog groups.
“In the diaspora, we become the voices of these political prisoners,” he said. “We need to talk about their pain and let the world know.”
Charniauskaya left the small Eastern European country in the mid-1990s for work and now, by day, is a science teacher at a high school in Aurora.
But after the dismissal, she is the main organizer of the local community in Belarus, as they work to draw attention to what is happening abroad and support those who are still there.
Charniauskaya left the country shortly after President Alexander Lukashenko came to power in 1994 and in the decades since has seen political repression grow in the country, particularly in the wake of the 2020 elections, which Lukashenko claimed to have won despite results be marked by fraud.
“Some get out of jail, but he puts more in there every day,” she said. “It’s like a conveyor belt. It doesn’t stop, the repression machine is working non-stop.”
The march will begin Sunday near Washington Street and Michigan Avenue next to Millennium Park at 1 p.m. The group plans to march north to the Tribune Tower carrying signs with the names of political prisoners and handing out leaflets with information on how to donate to the prisoners’ families. .
The date was chosen in honor of Vitold Ashurak, a political prisoner who died under unclear and suspicious circumstances in the country on May 21, 2021; the march through the center is one of the many planned throughout the country and Europe.
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ales Bialiatski, black coat, with Zhanna Charniauskaya, red hat in Chicago in 2019. Bialiatski has been imprisoned in Belarus since 2021.
Charniauskaya, who has helped lead the group of Belarusians in Chicago since 2010 and was elected in April as president of the Association of Belarusians in America, said the actions are risky, because “the Belarusian KGB follows all political activists here” – but necessary.
“The history of the Belarusian people should not be hidden from the world,” he said. “We can build a free Belarus.”
Chicago’s Belarusian community is small, but Vladzimir Kubyshkin of Bolingbrook is among those who attend.
Kubyshkin, 54, emigrated with his wife in 2015 for political reasons, and has been active in Belarusian community organizing since Lukashenko’s crackdown.
“Terrible things are happening in our country right now,” he said. “It’s also a very dangerous country for those who give their personal opinion, and it doesn’t matter who you are: a musician, a doctor or a factory worker.”
Like Charniauskaya, she hopes her efforts will draw attention to political repression in the country.
“Any change is possible only with strong pressure from the world community,” he said. “We need to draw attention to our problems.”
Vladzimir Kubyshkin, a Belarusian living in Bolingbrook. Kubyshkin, 54, moved to the United States from Minsk with his wife in 2015 for political reasons.
Michael Loria is a reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times via Report for Americaa nonprofit journalism program that aims to strengthen the newspaper’s coverage of the South Side and West Side communities.
