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Experts from "Diary of a Source"


• Official: That's why I decided to meet you. I can see that you want to do something for the environment, and we want to help you. We can make it possible for you to create your own ecological organization and become its president.

These words made me drunk. It was my dream.

• Once, we met in the [KGB] Official's car (I think it was a red Ford Fiesta). He said that we had come a long way and that it was time to legalize our collaboration. I saw a contract in front of me. Under its terms, I had to provide only true information, hide nothing, and keep my collaboration with the KGB secret. For all this, the KGB pledged to pay me (...) about 120,000 rubles, or $50. I signed this document.

• I was an observer during the local elections on January 14, 2007 and I calculated turnout figures. Later, the Official asked me:

Official: How did the monitoring go?
Me: The official turnout in my polling station is 59 percent, but it's 32 percent in my own calculation.
Official: Yes, that's the actual turnout figure.
Official: Why is the turnout falsified?
Official: People don't want to go and vote.

Now I had proof directly from the KGB that all elections in Belarus are falsified.

• I traveled to a session of the European Youth Parliament [EYP]. Next to me were two young men buying tickets to the same session. They taught me how to "launder" a bit of money from the tickets: you buy a second-class ticket, make a photocopy of it, give it back, and buy a third-class ticket.

Without de facto working for the EYP, I used their computer for my own purposes for half a year. I got the same perk from the NDI [National Democratic Institute]. I complained (...) about not having my own laptop, and they bought me a new one. But unlike in the first case, this one was given to me for life. It's funny, I sold my old computer...to Polesskaya [the headquarters of the Homel opposition]. Their computers had been seized shortly before. When I heard about it, I offered to sell them mine at a good price. It's precisely on that computer that I started writing the Diary...."
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