Romanian writers send a solidarity message to Svetlana Alexievich: She is a symbol of free will

On Saturday, the Romanian Writers' Union (USR) sent a message of solidarity with Nobel Laureate Svetlana Alexievich, an opponent of the Belarusian regime, saying she was "a symbol of free will."

"The Romanian Writers' Union expresses its full solidarity with the Nobel Laureate in Literature (2015), Svetlana Aleksievici, at a time when the freedom of her and her colleagues in the democratic opposition in Belarus is seriously threatened. The writer's great prestige, doubled by "the force of her civic courage, in her capacity as a member of the presidency of the Coordination Council of the Belarusian opposition, is turning Svetlana Alexievich, today when she is being harassed and threatened with detention on a daily basis into a symbol of the free spirit," she said in a statement issued on Saturday by the Writers' Union.

Svetlana Alexievich is "one of the strongest voices who does not hesitate to say that her country must leave behind a totalitarian, oppressive system and become a democratic state."

"We ourselves have lived in communism, which makes us particularly sensitive to the importance of respecting fundamental human freedoms. The values for which Svetlana Alexievich fights are also our values," the statement said.

At the age of 72, Svetlana Alexievich is the author of books on Chernobyl, the war in Afghanistan and the collapse of the Soviet Union, and a scathing critique of the Lukashenko regime.