Many people know me by “Squirrel.” It’s a nickname I got when I came to the United States as a freshman at the University of San Diego.

While many people know me by my nickname, they may not know where I am originally from. I am proudly from Belarus, and I am one of two men’s college basketball players at the Division I level from the landlocked Eastern European nation. Belarus has the European Union to the west and Russia to the east. It is a country independent from both, however.

Specifically, I was raised in Minsk, the country’s capital city. There are nearly two million people in Minsk and nearly 10 million people in the entire country. To be one of two people out of 10 million in anything means I’m somewhat unique in my identity, especially as a Belarusian college basketball player in the U.S. (and with a nickname of “Squirrel”).

It also means I have a platform, and I want to use that platform to tell you what is happening in my home country right now.

All of what you’re about to read, any statement I make here is made under one simple idea: to express my feelings of disgust and disappointment of what is happening back in my home country. 

I am a 21-year-old college student, and during recent political protests in Belarus I went through four straight nights of staring at my phone asking one question: is my family alive? 

Quite the experience, I gotta say.

To understand the reasons why everything in Belarus is happening right now, we need to go back in history. Our president, Aleksandr Lukashenko, has been at the helm of the country for 26 years. He was first elected in 1994, and originally our country had a limit of two five-year terms for presidents. That rule was changed in 2004 to be unlimited in number of terms. So every five years, we elect the next leader. For the better part of the last three decades, the winner has been the same. 

This year, it was time for another presidential election. It occurred on Aug. 9. 

And this is where everything went south. The day of the election, because people began to learn how the election supposedly went based on exit polls, everyone started to share their opinions and speak out on social media. It was later announced that President Lukashenko won reelection with 80 percent of the vote. Simply put, that number is counter to polls leading up to the election. It was too high. Since the election, the European Union and United States, among others, have publicly stated the elections were “not free and fair.”

So what happened next? THE INTERNET WAS SHUT DOWN. 

The first official version of the story is that our country got DDOS attacked — something that happens when hackers try to overload internet systems with data to bring them down — but for that to happen, from what I have read and understand, it would’ve been the biggest attack of that type in world’s history. 

Nevertheless, the internet was out. Doesn’t matter how it happened, but the facts are society was disconnected from each other and the outside world.

Because of the internet outage, I wasn’t able to talk to anyone from back home for four days straight. My family - which includes my parents, siblings and others - lives in the heart of Belarus. I would wake up in the middle of the night - Minsk is 10 hours ahead of San Diego - and see notifications on my phone. Immediately I would wonder if it was bad news from my family back home. I would at first be relieved when it was only another social media alert - Instagram and Snapchat never sleep - but that feeling of relief was quickly fleeting because my next thought was: if I’m not hearing anything, is that even worse? 

A heavy silence hung in the air for those four days.

And as you can see, the equation is simple: protests against a person in power for 26 years, plus some of the police forces are loyal to him, plus the public suspecting he allegedly cheated in the election, equals violence. My country is in pain, and at times, it seems there is little hope.

The protests, though, are peaceful. You can see in the media nothing was destroyed, looted or burned. Sometimes people take their shoes off when they step on the benches outside to not make them dirty. Some even carry garbage bags around to pick up any trash from the protests. Protesters are making their voices heard - but never forgetting to care for the world they walk in. Welcome to Belarus.

Belarusians are not provoking police either. Images from the protests show thousands of people with white balloons, white ribbons and flowers. But protesters are getting hit by flashbangs and smoke grenades. They are going outside and never coming back. Activists are being taken to what are described in the media as “political prison camps.” Flowers and balloons are met with aggression and imprisonment.

This is the year 2020, right? 

So with all of this in my head, those four nights were the toughest thing in my life. I haven’t been home since last August — 12 full months — due to the coronavirus pandemic. Then this? 

My goal is not to say one presidential candidate is bad and another is great. I just want people who cause violence to be held accountable for their actions, and without more people knowing the real story of what is happening in Belarus, nothing is going to happen. Based on that, I am going to share these three stories — there are plenty more; just Google it — and let people make up their own mind. 

The first story I saw was while I was on my phone scrolling through videos. Like any international student, social media is one way I stay connected to my home. In one video, I saw a woman that is not much older than my sisters. I opened the video and all I heard were cries and descriptions of attempted alleged sexual assault. Listening to the words and pleas for help being screamed by a girl that looked similar to my sisters — it all became even more personal for me and hit too close to home.

THERE IS NO REASON IN THE WORLD FOR POLICE TO DO THAT. Professional, trained policemen. FOR WHAT REASON DID SHE DESERVE THAT? I clearly don’t know all the details, but no person whatsoever should be put in that situation. It is unequivocally wrong.

The second example I saw involved a cop car, three cops and a random old man in his car. Imagine a street corner. The cop car stopped there, three cops stepped out, and the old man was driving by. The cop took his baton and hit the mirror of that car while it passed by. The car stopped, and from it stepped out an old man that looked like my grandad, maybe a little smaller, but the man definitely appeared to be in his 80s. He walked towards those three “protectors” but of course they just sent him away. So he walked to the police car, thinking maybe their supervisor was in there and seeking further assistance about the damage to his vehicle. He took a couple steps in that direction and the cops jumped on him, hitting his knees out from under him and knocking the old man to the ground before they cuffed him. 

All I could see or imagine was my grandad. If that man was my grandad, he would be dead. Again, I do not know all the details, but the violence on an elderly man seemed unwarranted from my point of view.

And then finally, the third story. I opened up the news and saw a headline that a 16-year-old Belarusian protester was in a coma after she was beat up by cops. No offense to anyone from home, but a 16-YEAR-OLD TEENAGER IS NOT A THREAT to trained forces. 

With those images — and countless other images — running around my mind and phone, it all makes me think, what do I do next?

I’m a 21-year-old college student preparing for classes and my senior season of basketball and people are naturally asking about my season and also when I think I can go home next.

Meanwhile, I’m asking myself, will I ever be able to go home? Is my life post-USD going to be as a political refugee?

Basketball has always been my savior, but I only have one more year of eligibility left at USD. These questions are going to have to be answered soon — and sooner than I’m probably ready for amidst the current circumstances.

Someone once told me, “All of us have our own wars, but that doesn’t mean we fight alone.” 

All of us are fighting our own “wars” — especially in the United States with the racial and social injustice experienced by the Black community and the pandemic striking everyone across the world. But I hope my story — as one of two male Belarusians who is attending a Division I college in the United States and playing basketball — can enlighten you. 

Some of us in Belarus feel we are in a peaceful war: fighting against violence and torture and standing for fair elections. But I promise you, Belarusians are not going about it alone.