Activists aren’t allowed to hold a non-political discussion

The Movement for Freedom (the MFF) and the Free Youth movement planned to arrange the meeting of the Muslim community representatives and the Western countries ambassadors in order to discuss the problems of coexistence of the Western and the Eastern cultures in today’s society.

Three days before the event, the Crown Plaza hotel administration cancelled its decision on providing the premises for this discussion named “Hijabs In Europe: For And Against. Belarusian View” as part of the European Week-End culture and enlightenment initiative.

On February 23, the hotel administration informed that all premises were reserved “due to technical mistakes in banquet service”, though the rent of the premise was paid four days ago, and the agreement was reached as early as ten days ago. According to the Free Youth leader Mikita Krasnou, paying the premise rent, he was even proposed to prepare two halls in case more guests will come than was planned.

The Belarus Muslim community representatives were invited to this meeting, as well as European embassies representatives, journalists, and students interested in this issue.

“The MFF is the human rights advocacy and enlightenment civil association. That’s why our activity is concentrated also on cultural and educational projects. The event which should have been held this Saturday was of purely cultural nature: we notified the guests and participants of its non-political purpose beforehand. Our purpose was, first and foremost, to find out the opinion of young Belarusians, to show cultural diversity of Europe, and to learn to hold tolerant discussions on complex issues. Thus, we face obstacles even in non-political projects”, Dasha Slabchanka, the MFF educational and cultural projects manager, commented on this situation.

“The idea of the European Week-Ends is to get students familiarized with the European culture, with political and economical system of the united Europe through arranging such events... We want our youth to be closer to Europe. We want to engage Belarusian youth in the most urgent and interesting discussions. In this way, we want to get into the common European discussion space. I think we shouldn’t consider only domestic, confined topics”, Mikita Krasnou adds.

According to the European Week-Ends organizers, discussion on this and on other issues will surely take place at a later date.

For reference – During 2009, the MFF together with the Free Youth arranged over 30 events relating to the European culture as part of the European Week-End campaign: these included distribution of information leaflets, visiting exhibitions, arranging films viewing, meetings with European diplomats, etc.

European Week-Ends will continue in 2010 as monthly public discussions of the most urgent European issues. Discussions will be attended by the experts in respective fields, by the representatives of cultural and arts community, by the non-governmental organizations activists, and by the representatives of the European Union embassies. Most participants of the European Week-Ends are active Belarusian young people – boys and girls who are interested in what their peers in the EU are thinking about, and who want to express their opinion on the most urgent issues.

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