“I don’t see myself as a member of the Belarusian diaspora in Lithuania. It is mentally stressful for me to write my address in Vilnius. I see it as distance-working in Belarus. I am not integrating myself into Lithuanian society. Many Lithuanian friends support Belarus because they have been through this path themselves. I am visiting, I am not home. I consider this to be a temporary exile. I left for a month, a year has passed, but I must return. Everything I do, I do for Belarus.”
“We must understand that these people are risking the power and money that they managed to seize for themselves, and they don’t want to give it up. It is a long process. There is an ongoing attempt to topple the regime. Each day of my work, I strive to at least prod the regime. If we stopped, Lukashenko would stomp the people who continue to resist within Belarus into the ground. He will stop at nothing. He has no scruples – he locks up mothers of large families, older people with severe health problems... For many, it is hard to maintain hope for the future and a courageous spirit considering what is going on. But I am a person with an interest in history. I can see how processes unfold in a historical context, I understand that the gambles he has made are causing him trouble. It is hard to manage such tension, to maintain the security forces, to feed the population. It is a matter of time. The second question is what will be next. There is a long road ahead of us.”
“We received the first news about a new virus. I thought it was just another sensation and that the problem was not so severe. Then on 24 March I read an article by one Belarusian doctor, who called on citizens to stay at home, while himself preparing for work. Lukashenko said there was no COVID. That it was enough for a person to drink vodka, visit the spa, drive a tractor, play with white puppies, and breath deeply, and he would be healthy. I appreciated the doctor’s courage and decided to help. I found out that hospitals were missing high-level personal protective equipment, namely, FFP3 respirators. When a problem occurs, it can usually be solved by acquiring finances and by the purchase and delivery of all necessities. Except this time the task proved to be extraordinarily difficult because respirators were missing not just in Belarus but all over the world. The first wave of COVID started and it was necessary to procure respirators to protect health workers. The countries that produced them were blocking their export. That was mainly the case of the US, but export limitation also applied in China and Russia. We found the first respirators for this doctor literally underground. With miners.”
Andrei Stryzhak was born in the town of Rechytsa in the Homyel Region of the former Belarusian SSR on 23 June 1985. He has Belarusian, Russian, and Ukrainian roots. His father, Siarhei Uladzimiravich, and his mother, Tatsiana Anatolyeuna Stryzhak, were active members of the Communist Party. His mother chaired the Party committee of the Homyel Chemical Plant’s workshop department. In 1990s the family spent two years in Poland and Germany. Andrei attended a German school at the time, which encouraged his later pro-European views. He completed primary school in Rechytsa and spent his later years working as a volunteer in the staff of Syamyon Damashyn. In 2003 he enrolled at the Faculty of Arts of the Homyel State University. In 2004–2005 he was a poll observer for an organisation called “Partnership” during the parliamentary elections. His opposition attitudes caused him to be expelled from university. In 2011 he undertook a course in “International Standards in National Practice” at the Belarusian House of Human Rights; he became a defender of human rights and submitted individual complaints for human rights violations to the relevant UN committee. Andrei himself was recognised as a victim by the UN Human Rights Committee. In 2013–2014 he was an observer of the “Euromaydan” events in Ukraine and worked as a volunteer at the Euromaydan-SOS hotline in Kiev. In 2015 he started the “Belarus-ARO Humanitarian Route” initiative and supplied humanitarian aid to Donbas over the course of five years. In 2017 he was one of the founders of the BY Help Fund. In 2019 he co-founded BYCOVID-19, an organisation that procures necessary anti-coronavirus equipment for Belarusian hospitals. In 2020 he helped establish the BYSOL solidarity fund. He left Belarus to avoid the threat of arrest; he continues his opposition activities from Vilnius, Lithuania.
