Dear friends,
We write to you, recalling all our experienced and imaginary events of the past years, in the hope for an inevitable meeting and that the future will accommodate all our desires and all our struggles.
Today we direct our forces to support our comrades and friends from Ukraine in the resistance to the colonial, patriarchal, extractivist Russian war machine, which destroys life in Ukraine, as well as Chechnya, Syria, Abkhazia, Georgia, and backs repressive regimes of Belarus, Kazakhstan and others geographies. The destruction of life, nature and culture is a direct consequence of the economic and political imperial ambitions of what we know under the Russian Federation, intersected by large and minor toxic narratives about the nation, the state, capital and the people. It encompasses “high” chauvinistic culture, domestic racism, and elimination of critical programs of decolonization and resistance.
We all remember the incredible level of mobilization, resistance and solidarity in Belarus after the falsified elections of 2020, which lasted many months: hundreds of thousands of protesters, self-organized infrastructures of mutual aid and political struggle, mass strikes. We also remember the unprecedented level of the still ongoing repressions: more than 1000 political prisoners, hundreds of thousands of those fled the country, the liquidation of almost all NGOs. Belarusian regime survived not only due to repressions, but also owing to the support of Putin’s regime and on the background of slowness and indecisiveness of European reactions. Today, this led to the fact that Belarus participates in the war against Ukraine on the side of the aggressor, hosting the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, providing them with its territories and infrastructure.
The struggle can only be intersectional and international, it cannot be contained within the borders of nation-states. Сounter to repression and the military machine, we are not going to give up. But the tyrannic power is not going to retreat too, killing, destroying, dehumanising, escalating repressions against anti-military voices and bodies. Clearly, the struggle will be long; but we do not have time. The Russian military invasion of Ukraine must stop, Russian troops must immediately leave the territory of Belarus.
Since 2020, organizing WHPH in Belarus in the usual format is neither possible nor safe — any meeting of people in the public space could be seen as a protest action and attacked; any manifestation of solidarity is criminalized; cultural spaces and organizations are persecuted and eliminated.
We always thought that WHPH was only possible in Minsk. But in recent months we were preparing the laboratory, which was supposed to happen in Ukraine. In the current situation of its impossibility we call you to join WHPH in those places where you are. We know that our network is critical to the ugly dispositions of power — the despotic extractivist regimes of Eastern Europe and the hypocritical racist “western” democracies, and therefore we count on your solidarity in this struggle. We believe that being included in institutional, para-institutional, self-organized, activist, comradely networks, you have the ability to intensify their resources. As we know, time is queer, and it prepares unexpected encounters.
We urge you to take active actions against the machine of war and power — ingenuity, perseverance and confidence are our allies. Support your comrades, continue the resistance to the colonial military policy of Russia in where you are now.
What you can do right now:
🖇 donate to humanitarian funds and our comradely initiatives working in Ukraine and / or support the Armed Forces of Ukraine (everyone may have their own opinion towards the armed forces, but now without the Ukrainian army, people in Ukraine will not have a chance to survive. The money is also used for security: on walkie-talkies, body armour, medicines. Self-defence is not an attack, and we consider it important to distinguish it now. In addition to the Armed Forces of Ukraine, there are other defence groups on the list: territorial defence, left-wing militant self-organisations)
✏️ by all means disseminate information, agitate;
⚒ protest, strike, sabotage in all possible ways, especially in Russia and Belarus;
🌪 in Belarus, it is now especially important to disseminate information about the danger of a possible entry of military forces of the Republic of Belarus into the territory of Ukraine, as well as methods to counter this;
🎤 give a platform to voices from Ukraine in your (online) spaces, in your media and in your cultural programs;
💫 create long-term support programs for refugees from Ukraine, including people with non-Ukrainian passports;
❌ boycott Russian and Belarusian state and oligarchic institutions;
🚨 help with evacuation from Ukraine;
🔈 demand more decisive actions and sanctions from your governments, such as stopping purchases of Russian gas and oil, demand more military assistance to Ukraine, expand the mediation of your diplomats in the negotiations between Ukraine and the Russian Federation for an unconditional ceasefire and the withdrawal of all Russian troops from the territory of Ukraine;
☔️ giving priority to helping the Ukraine, provide support for further anti-war activities to political activists from Russia and Belarus who actively opposed the regimes of these states and were persecuted.
With solidarity to our comrades in and from Ukraine,
Your WHPH working group