29-31 July 2005, Minsk (Belarus)

You must know that in the wild east, clocks are ticking different. It came out of the sudden when the city-council of Belarus second biggest city Gomel has withdrawn the permission.

Minsk is the capital and largest city in Belarus, situated on the Svislach and Niamiha rivers and has a population of 1.8 million inhabitants. It is the the only city in Belarus with an underground metro system. Construction of the metro began in 1977, soon after the city reached over a million people.

After Gomel-permission was withdrawn, Liquid of True Stilo Crew, the local orga had found another spot located at a housing-project where a lot of war-veterans lived. But, as you can imagine, veterans, especially russian veterans, are not very open minded when it comes to new culture. So it was not surprise that a week after we got the permission it had been withdrawn due to veterans political lobby. But eventhough: the local orga found a new spot, located near to the hall-of-fame, next to the train-tracks. This spot contained more than 20 nice walls ready for dope productions. So the MOS started Friday afternoon with priming the walls and working on concepts.

More than 40 writers from all over Russia, Belaurs and Ukraine came to rock the walls. Even from really far out, heads travelled for days, just to be there. Writers not only fom Moskau, St. Petersburg or Kiev but also from Murmansk, Kaliningrad or Brest. Its been amazing to see how fast Graffiti developed over there nd how much the heads are into it. The netting of the scene and the quality of artworks are on a very high level. Beside of this, the spirit of the Graf-scene is just right: the heads are very friendly, open-minded and are very much into colaborations. Some artists… Belarus: Afro, Ariel, Arso, ChekOne, Chrome, Dzenik, El Paso, Ena, Iork, Kems, Kusto, Liquid, Matio, Mors, Odes, Pour, Shye, Slam, Snerd, Stone, Tito. Russia: Aikido, Akus, Amoks, Amores, Aske, Burn, Crab, DNA, Echo, Leksus, Mark, Mizer, SanAndreas, Sjam, Splash, Stan, Tor, Zloy, Zmogk. Germany: Seak, Cazo

Organizations such as the OSCE declared the 2004-election “un-free” because of the opposition parties’ poor results and media bias in favor of the government. In the country’s 2006 presidential election, Lukashenko was opposed by Alexander Milinkevich, a candidate representing various opposition parties, and by Alaksandar Kazulin of the Social Democrats. Kazulin was detained and beaten by police during protests. Lukashenko won the election with 80%, the OSCE and other organizations called the election unfair. He has described himself as having an “authoritarian ruling style”. Western countries have described Belarus under him as a dicktatorship. The Belarusian government is also criticized for human rights violations and its actions against non-governmental organizations, independent journalists, minorities, opposition politicians.

See Also

29-31 August 2003, Antwerp (Belgium)

Author: MoS

MOS Orga.