Mikalai Statkevich

The head of the Belarusian Social Democratic Party (Narodnaya Hramada).

Born on August 12, 1956 in the village of Lyadno Slutsk district in a family of teachers. He comes from an old and noble family of Statkevich with “Kastsesha” emblem.

He began his career at the Minsk Higher Anti-Aircraft Engineering School, after which he served four years in the Arctic. He returned to his native school as teacher (1985-1990), defended a PhD (1986). He is a Lieutenant Colonel.

Statkevich is one of the authors of of the Belarusian army concept, implemented after the collapse of the USSR (1990). In 1991, in protest against the dispersal of Vilnius demonstrators with tanksm he left the Communist Party. He is the only person in the Belarus military who publicly opposed the coup. In 1993 he opposed the Collective Security Treaty with the warring countries (Armenia, Tajikistan and others.), according to which Belarus was to send its troops to war in other countries.

For this he was discharged from the army a month before defending his doctoral dissertation. After a broad public campaign in support of Mikalai Statkevich, the Belarusian parliament signed the document, but with a proviso that Belarusians will not be sent to the “hot spots”.

He created the Belarusian Association of Military and headed it (1991-95).

From 1996, he headed the Belarusian Social Democratic Party (Narodnaya Hramada), which in 2004 split into his supporters and those who proposed to remove him from office. Statkevich was expelled, and the party took away one word form its title (it became the Belarusian Social Democratic Party (Hramada), which is now headed by Iryna Veshtard). In 2007, Statkevich decided to restore the Belarusian Social Democratic Party (Narodnaya Hramada), was elected its leader, but the party was not registered by the Ministry of Justice.

In 2000 he ran for the House of Representatives, but was not elected.

In 2005, he got punished by three years’ imprisonment for organizing a street protest in Minsk against the official results of the parliamentary elections and the 2004 referendum.

Since 2003, headed the European Coalition, which includes parties, trade unions, women’s and youth organizations. He was a candidate at the 2010 presidential election from this party. “I hope that this nomination will somehow insure me against prison. After all, before the two previous presidential campaigns there were criminal cases against me,” he said. He was accused of organizing mass disorder on the day of presidential elections in 2010 and sentenced to six years in prison.

This year, representatives of some opposition structures have created an initiative group to nominate a Statkevich as presidential candidate. The CEC did not register it, citing his criminal record.

On August 22, 2015 Belarusian president Alyaksandr Lukashenka pardoned ex-presidential candidate Mikalai Statkevich and other political prisoners.

He has more than 60 publications in the field of political science, ergonomics, engineering and social psychology.

His wife, Maryna Adamovich, taught epidemiology at the Medical University, she now works at a human rights organization. He has two daughters.