Natalia Kolyada last year. Listen to her story. She is living this now.
The corrupt government of Belarus have abandoned all pretense of being anything but a gestapo regime. The recent stolen election by Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, (dig that mustache. Some people you don’t have to draw) 
who claims to have won by 79% of the vote, has been followed up by mass arrests. Among those “criminals” detained are all the candidates who ran against him. And the artistic directors of the Belarus Free Theater. These are brave people, who have been performing highly charged and brilliant political theater at home and at the Public here in NY. They are due back here next month. On Sunday the directors of the theater were roughed up and arrested at a rally in Minsk. Natalia Kolyada (the charming co-director of the company seen above) and her husband Nikolai Khalezin were arrested and then released on bail and are now in hiding. The manager Artiom Zhelezniak was tried and convicted of illegal assembly. There have been protests in London (see here one attended by the great actor Ian
Please sign this petition. It will take a moment. Artists need to stand up for each other, especially when it becomes a life and death situation. To save people we need to save the art.
