28 MAY 2005, Page 21

They can’t leave

From Gerald Hitman Sir: I wonder which Belarus Julian Evans visited to prepare his article (‘Is Belarus next in line?’, 14 May). In the one I know, schools are without electric light, hospitals are virtual drug-free zones and one buys one’s petrol from a man with a jerrycan who waits outside the state-owned petrol station, selling the fuel he has just had issued to him for his collective farm. One needs a licence to blow one’s nose and the only way to get a licence is to pay a bribe to a government apparatchik.

The Belorussian people are educated, cultured and aspirational, and the regime survives only because the EU has erected an iron curtain to prevent their emigrating to the West.

Gerald Hitman

Brockhall, Lancashire