News
2024-09-01 15:57

Today would have been Oleg Gulak's birthday

On December 16, 2022, the Belarusian and international human rights community was shocked by the news of the death of human rights activist Aleh Gulak. Today he would have turned 57.

Aleh Gulak was born on September 1, 1967, in the village of Zhilichi, Mogilev region, into a family of teachers. In 1984, he graduated from school with a gold medal and entered the law faculty of BSU. In 1996, he joined the Belarusian Helsinki Committee, and in 2008 he became its chairman. As a public defender, he participated in dozens of court cases, public actions to protect the rights of people who became victims of human rights violations in Belarus. Our project has repeatedly invited him as an expert for materials on human rights.

On the anniversary of his death, colleagues and friends of Aleh launched a project with memories of him. Memories were shared by Pavel Sapelko, Valentin Stefanovich and Vladimir Labkovich, Voitsek Borodich-Smalinsky, Olga Smolyanko, Yuri Chavusov, Dmitry (colleague in the industry), Sergei Drozdovsky, Oleg Ageyev, Maria Yasenovskaya, Boris Goretsky, Evgeniya Klementyeva Holm.

Six months after Oleg's death, our project asked colleagues to share their memories of him. We suggest recalling once again what scale of a person Belarusian society and the human rights movement lost: "Even in the conditions given to us, a person can walk a straight, wide and honest path!"