This book is a collection of essays from student participants in Belarus' 2020 protests. Many of them ended up in jail, having experienced first-hand the maltreatment by Lukashenka's regime. All of them had to flee their homeland as a result. Yet, their young voices today - which in this book, we refer to as the UNBROKEN GENERATION - resonate stronger than ever before, giving us HOPE for the future, and BELIEF in ourselves, in the process of becoming THE PEOPLE.
Following the election on 9 August 2020, nearly fifty thousand were arrested, including up to two thousand political prisoners, and a few murdered or 'disappeared' by the regime. Almost ten percent of the population had to flee the country. Months of confrontation have been followed by years of incarceration and sickening torture of detainees in custody where many, including minors, were forced to kneel for hours, beaten, deprived of water and food, verbally abused, and raped. Among them were the authors of this book. Arrests, cruelty, and physical and moral torture continue to date - that is, four years on, at the time of writing.
And yet, as one of the authors reflected, something beautiful was born in this hell of darkness and brutality - protestors and sympathisers gradually morphed into something bigger than a crowd of people being thrown together for different reasons. Through solidarity, self-help, care and love for each other, they suddenly found themselves on the path of becoming a PEOPLE, dignified and thirsty for change.