Outside Philadelphia City Hall, members of the Belarusian community raised a century-old, red-and-white banner that’s become a powerful symbol of resistance to the country’s autocratic president and a bold emblem of support for embattled Ukraine.
The flag of Belarus features a thick, horizontal stripe of red atop a more narrow line of green.
Others traveled from New York, New Jersey, Texas, Florida, Illinois, and Virginia, forming a crowd of about 150, which included supporters from the local Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Polish, and Georgian communities. The commemoration proved again that wars and movements are waged not just with bullets but with symbols, like the “Z” on the side of Russian tanks — said to be for, meaning, “For Victory” — and the sunflower, which has become an omnipresent sign of Ukraine’s fight for survival.
The day had its twists. New regulations bar the raising of unofficial flags at City Hall. So the Belarusians brought their own flagpole, secured in a cement base, and raised the red-and-white flag beside the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S., and POW flags. At the same time the city administration was facing growing numbers of requests for ceremonies — 40 a year, up from 10 — with little formal guidance on what kinds of flags could be flown. New rules established that only flags recognized by the U.S. State Department would be allowed.“We’re going to show our support for Ukraine,” said Maryia Astapenka, 32, of Levittown, whoin 2011. Her sister, Tatsiana, 25, came five years later from a homeland she called “a small country with a big dictatorship.
The evolution of the Belarus flag is closely tied to its relationship with the Soviet Union and Russia, and with its people’s yearning for democracy.
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