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Studio Total co-founder sends letter to Lukashenka

 

Studio Total co-founder Per Cromwell sent Wednesday an open letter to Alyaksandr Lukashenka to reiterate that the Swedish PR agency had not had any contacts with Belarusian citizens before performing its July 4 flight to Belarus and express readiness to meet with investigators in the country.

“It was easy to find all we needed to know about Belarusian air defense on the internet (Wikipedia), and the description was the same everywhere: a brutal, but severely malfunctioning mechanism, best suited for parades and for harassing civilians,” said Mr. Cromwell, commenting on Studio Total's stunt to promote free speech.

On July 4, a single-engine plane piloted by Studio Total representatives invaded Belarus` airspace and dropped hundreds of teddy bears with "pro-free speech" signs on the town of Ivyanets and Minsk.

At the end of last week, the Committee for State Security (KGB) arrested young photographer Anton Surapin, who was the first to publish images of the dropped teddy bears. The student is facing a charge of helping foreigners illegally enter Belarus.

"Recently, you announced that you, personally, guaranteed the effectiveness of the Belarus defense," Mr. Cromwell said in the letter to the Belarusian leader. "You have spent 20 billions of euros on an air defense system that could not detect a homebuilt aeroplane with a cargo of teddy bears."

He suggested that Mr. Lukashenka should pull himself together until it was too late. "Use some of the financial resources you're spending on the KGB and military parades to help the nation out of its financial crisis," he said. "More importantly. Be less politically active. Perhaps you could play a little more hockey? They tell us you are quite good at that!"

“But If you absolutely must jail and abuse people – why not invite us?” Mr. Cromwell went on to say. “ After all, we were the ones who flew the plane, not some poor guy who happened to sell us chocolate. We promise you to come and answer all your questions and tell you everything about the operation. How we flew, how we cheated your air-defense systems and so on. All you need to do is to promise not to torture some innocent passer-by, in your frustration.” // BelaPAN