Things will be a little different for Russiabot this week as I scramble to keep up with information coming out of Belarus. Keep reading for a roundup of what’s been going on in ‘Europe’s Last Dictatorship’, which is ripe with political unrest, as this week has demonstrated
Belarus just closed out its fourth night of country-wide protests —possibly the largest in post-Soviet Belarusian history—following a contested presidential election on August 9th. Both the ‘perpetual incumbent’ Alexander Lukashenko and his challenger, Sevetlana Tikhanovskaya, claimed victory. Both candidates have been represented in the streets as pro-opposition protestors face off with the government’s OMON (special police mobile units).
There are a number of discrepancies between how votes are being reported by Belarus’ central election commission versus information emerging from individual precinct election commissions. Although Lukashenko undoubtably appealed to a percentage of the population —after all, many government workers depend on Lukashenko’s administration for stable income—Lukashenko’s proclamations of winning close to 80% of the country’s vote are increasingly unlikely when local results are taken into consideration. A significant number of vote calculations at precincts in the capital city of Minsk and its surrounding metro area, for example, determined that Tikhanovskaya actually carried five to six times more votes than Lukashenko.
And so, the protests erupted, dominating headlines coming from the region. Minsk, Brest, Vitebsk, Grodno, and even villages like Lebedevo, have all experienced waves of people taking to the streets to voice their discontent at the continuation of 26 years of Lukashenko’s rule. Уходи! — “Leave” — has become the all-encompassing slogan of these rallies, along with Жыве Беларусь (Long Live Belarus).
There are scenes of police brutality; of armor-clad OMON (They are colloquially known as “cosmonauts” in the Russian-speaking world due to their large helmets, circa last summer’s protests in Moscow) beating protestors, deploying flash-bangs. An estimated two protestors have died since people took to the streets on Sunday.
Lukashenko reportedly deployed the Belarusian military to protest hotspots across Minsk to reinforce police units active in the area, calling those taking to the streets “unemployed drug addicts” and “sheep controlled by forces from abroad” (namely, Poland, UK, and the Czech Republic).
Incidentally, the use-of-force justification for police may sound familiar to readers from the United States: the phrase “this is an unsactioned rally”, shouted from police megaphones, can be heard on protest footage from around Belarus.
The Vanishing Candidate
It seemed like Svetlana Tikhanovskaya vanished from the face of the earth not long after she publicly contested election results on August 10th. She spent 3 hours at the office of the Belarusian Central Election Commission, and left the building with a cryptic farewell of “I have made my decision.”
A day later, with the whereabouts of the candidate still not known, a video emerged on Belarusian state media, with a visibly distressed Tikhanovskaya —obviously reading from a script—calling on protestors not to resist the authorities, and to return home.
Dear citizens of the Republic of Belarus.
I, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, thank you for participating in elections for the new head of state. The people of Belarus have made their choice. With gratitude and warmth, I am appealing to all citizens who supported me all this time. Belarusians, I call on you to behave with reason and respect the law. I do not want violence or bloodshed. I ask you not to resist the police, and not to gather on the plazas, and not to risk your lives. Protect yourselves and your loved ones.
Online sleuths were quick to point out that the couch, as well as the blinds, in the frame’s background were suspiciously similar to those found in previous videos filmed in the Central Election Commission’s office, where Tikhanovskaya spent 3 hours in the company of “unknown representatives of the security services”.
Naturally, this added a macabre element to this scripted call for an end to resistance. The question remains at to what was the metaphorical (or quite literal) ‘gun to the head’ that prompted Tikhanovskaya to withdraw her challenge to Lukashenko.
Tikhanovskaya re-emerged on August 11th in Lithuania, ostensibly driven across the border by the Belarusian KGB, although the Lithuanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs denies these media reports. Vilnius is currently offering members of the Belarusian opposition year-long Lithuanian visas in the event they flee their country.
The Coming Days
It’s still unclear which way this will go.
The Lukashenko government has won a major victory in splitting Tikhanovskaya away from the opposition bloc challenging the establishment ( far-fetched rumors are currently circulating pro-government social media channels that Tikhanovskaya is opening legal proceedings against political allies Veronika Tsepkalo and Maria Kolesnikova…over their plans to murder Tikhanovskaya?! ). Although Tikhanovskaya’s absence has not impacted the spirit of protests in major urban areas, such as Minsk, it does seem like protests in smaller communities across Belarus may be running out of steam without centralized leadership.
Lukashenko and his allies maintain absolute control of the military and security services of Belarus. That, at the end of the day, will be the decisive factor in controlling the streets, and preventing any sort of impactful changes to the country’s government. Although individual police officers have broken rank to join the opposition, it will take an institutional-level mutiny in the ranks of the armed forces, akin to the 1991 collapse of the USSR, to push Lukashenko from office.
Political commentator and Novaya Gazeta columnist Yulia Latynina accurately pointed out that the protests lack the zealous characteristics of, let’s say, a radical Islamist group, or a 20th century communist uprising. Those taking to the streets across Belarus are regular people who want to secure a fair form of government to generally better their lives. There isn’t an impetus, nor acceptance, for the possibility of death in service of the cause. This is the deciding factor in the unbalanced odds of facing off with a far better armed authoritarian government, which is ready to escalate the use of force to ensure its survival.
Thankfully, aside from the 2 documented fatalities of the past 4 days. there hasn’t been much bloodshed in these demonstrations. Cops crack skulls but have not crossed the threshold of firing bullets into crowds of civilians quite yet.
Barring the defection of a major military unit, or the refusal of riot police to carry out increasingly vicious orders, Lukashenko likely has his next five-year term secured. But the ultimate victory will be with the opposition. The current government’s heavy-handed response has cost Lukashenko much of his already faltering credibility with the Belarusian public. His lack of adherence to the democratic process, paired with bumbling denunciations of public grievances as manipulations from abroad, will not be forgotten by those taking to the streets, particularly by the younger generations of politically active Belarusians. If the political culture of the country was once characterized by apathy, this Summer’s protests in Belarus have clearly underscored that this is no longer the case, which will have major reverberations across the former Soviet bloc in months to come.
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