News is emerging from Belarus that the brothers and founders of the band Litesound were arrested this week. Formed in 2005, the band represented Belarus at Eurovision in Baku in 2012 with “We Are The Heroes” and remain fairly popular in Belarus today.
The Belarussian weekly Nasha Niva is reporting that a unit of SAHR broke into the home of brothers Dmitry and Vladimir Kariakin. SAHR is a unit of the special armed forces of Belarus, meant to protect public order, fight organized crime, and organize preventive measures in correctional facilities, among other things.
According to a message from SAHR, Dmitry and Vladimir were detained for participating in the ‘demonstration’ of 16th August 2020. That was the biggest Freedom March in Belarus’ history against its now 28-year dictator Aleksandr Lukashenko. The security forces also claim they found “an arsenal of unregistered weapons belonging to their father […] in the house.”
Just two weeks ago, Dmitry was in the Netherlands, and posted this anti-war message to Instagram:
View this post on Instagram
The brothers have been vocal in their disapproval of Lukashenko and their faces are synonymous with the fight for peace and democracy in Belarus. Notably, Litesound are not the only Eurovision artists to make it into Lukashenko’s ‘Black Book’. Naviband (2017) and VAL (2020) have been outspoken against the regime, and have also appeared at Freedom Marches since 2020.
Belarus is currently serving a three-year ban from the EBU, that was triggered in 2021 when the nationalist group Galasy ZMesta were internally chosen to represent Belarus. Their song (“Ya nauchu tebya (I’ll Teach You)”) was so pro-regime in nature, the EBU responded by saying, “the song puts the non-political nature of the Contest in question.” The ban includes participating in and broadcasting Eurovision is unlikely to be repealed, given the continued behaviour of the Lukashenko regime.
You can relive the performance of Litesound from 2012 below.
