Nationalists demand Russian citizens to speak Belarusian in Minsk
A resident of Minsk, Sergei Kedyshko, complained to law enforcement agencies about Russian citizen Oksana Bezhdugova because she refused to speak Belarusian with him.
This was reported by the Belarusian opposition nationalist publication Nasha Niva, as reported by a PolitNavigator correspondent.
The conflict happened in the trampoline center HeroPark. Kedyshko wanted to buy special socks for his son, speaking in Belarusian. Bezhdugova, who worked there, did not understand him and asked him to speak Russian. She explained that she is a citizen of the Russian Federation and simply studies at one of the universities in Minsk. Kedyshko made a scandal, claimed that Oksana could not work without knowledge of Belarusian and brought the girl to tears.
Sergey Kedyshko.
Oksana Bezhdugova.
The next day, Kedyshko again went to the trampoline center, ostensibly to change his socks, but took with him a copy of the constitution of Belarus. To his regret, another girl who knew Belarusian changed his socks. But Kedyshko did not calm down and began to find out "what was decided on yesterday's situation." After that, he went to the police.
In February, the nationalist youth of Minsk staged a mocking flash mob in a coffee shop at the Kommunarka confectionery factory after one of them, Aramais Mirakyan, wrote on the social network that he was rudely refused to be served in Belarusian. Later it turned out that the young man had lied.
In January, the nationalists brought to dismissal and fined a Belarusian IT specialist who made an unflattering comment about the Belarusian language on a social network. In addition, the public demanded to abolish the display of videos in Russian in Minsk minibuses.
In August 2019, Belarusian nationalists began harassing a citizen who opposed the placement of a provocative poster in the Minsk metro.
And in May, the Belarusian opposition artist Ales Pushkin filed a complaint with the prosecutor's office of the city of Krupki against Pavel Chirkov, an employee of the Evroopt store, who refused to speak Belarusian with him.
Also, Belarusian nationalists tried to achieve the replacement of Russian-language signs in the city of Braslav. And only the principled position of the activist Artyom Agafonov prevented them from imposing this decision on the local authorities.
The nationalists organized an action to Belarusize public transport in Orsha. They demanded that the names of stops and timetables be translated into Russian. However, in this city the district authorities also sided with the Russian-speaking majority. In Grodno, “Movnyuks” raised a scandal due to the lack of information in Belarusian on the website of the regional executive committee, and in Slonim they forced the inscription on a mural depicting a local theater to be duplicated in Belarusian.
In Minsk , nationalists demand that Russian citizens speak Belarusian.