Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, nicknamed “Europe’s last dictator,” appears to have seriously underestimated at least two serious threats to his 26-year reign.
One is a microscopic contagion, the coronavirus, which has killed many of his compatriots. The other: masses of women, usually dressed in white, armed in provocative solidarity on the streets of Minsk, the capital of the former Soviet republic.
The country, which has a population of 9.5 million, has been rocked by protests since Lukashenko, its longtime president, declared the winner through the electoral government in Sunday’s national elections.
With symptoms of blatant voter fraud, human rights groups, the European Union, the United Nations and Trump’s leadership have questioned the fairness of elections and denounced the brutal remedy of nonviolent protesters.
Throughout the week, repression was intensified through security forces against opposition protesters. Nearly 7,000 others have been arrested, the internal ministry announced Thursday. Viral videos showed incredibly violent beatings of protesters; Reports have been leaked about the horrific situations of detention and torture of detainees.
Adding a new size to the riots, state factory staff, a key district of Lukashenko, began leaving their team and organizing movements on Thursday. And several renowned news anchors in the state media have resigned, no less than explicitly the line of government.
Women who formed “chains of solidarity,” holding flowers or portraits of detainees, demanded an end to police brutality as passing motorists honked their horns in support.
On the other side of #Bielorrusia, it forms human chains of solidarity. In this video I took a moment ago in #Minsk, they sing “We are for peace!” It is also a harsh protest against police brutality. Such meetings take place in Grodno, Lida, Baranavichy, Zhodzina pic.twitter.com/YEwiNPd4hT
– Hanna Liubakova (@HannaLiubakova) 12 August 2020
“People are no longer afraid here in this country,” Natalia Denisova, a lawyer and election supervisor, told the BBC. “They need a fair choice, that’s all they need.”
Three of the main opposition figures in the country are women, adding the main opposition candidate, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who, under pressure from security forces, fled to neighbouring Lithuania after filing an official complaint about the election results.
Even in a classical society where many women cling to classical gender roles, Lukashenko’s prospects, 65, are perceived through many as retrogrades; said the country was not in a position to have a female leader.
Until she succeeded her imprisoned blogger husband, 37-year-old Tikhanovskaya, a full-time housekeeper and mother, proved to be a charismatic figure and her supporters ran a social media campaign.
“She obviously underestimated through Lukashenko,” said Nigel Gould-Davies, Britain’s ambassador to Belarus in 2008-09. The role of women in the electoral crusade and demonstrations, said, “Distinctive and vital arrangement. I can’t think of any other occasions in the region with such a strong and significant gender element.”
The only winner of the Belarusian Nobel Prize in Literature, Svetlana Alexievich, also added her voice to the protests, condemning the violence and saying lukashenko resigned.
“Leave before it’s too late, before you’ve plunged other people into a terrible abyss, in the abyss of civil war,” the 72-year-old man said Wednesday in an interview with Radio Liberty’s Belarusian service, and addressed his comments to the leader for a long time. Alexievich received the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature for his paintings on repression and official crimes in the former Soviet republics.
The European Union’s foreign ministers were to meet on Friday to impose sanctions on Belarus. On Thursday, foreign envoys in Minsk deposited flowers at the site of a protester this week. Authorities said he was carrying an explosive device that was fired when he was ready to release it, an edition of occasions that was disputed through opposition activists.
Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo, who was traveling to the country as the riots continued in Belarus, reiterated hope for a “better outcome” for the Belarusian people.
“I am convinced that the EU and the US fully share the same considerations about what happened and what is happening in Belarus,” he said in Slovenia on Thursday. Pompeo criticized belarus not to mention Belarus in a speech to Czech lawmakers the day before on freedom in the “heart of Europe.”
The EU is cautious, not least of bringing Lukashenko closer to Russia. Although the Belarusian president has been in tension with Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin has made it clear that he does not need to see the country turn west and seek to join the EU or deepen its partnerships with NATO.
The Belarusian leader has angrily denounced what he calls outdoor interference, pointing to his eastern European neighbours, Poland and the Czech Republic, as well as Britain. He won a warm congratulations on the vote of some world leaders, most of them authoritarians like him, adding Putin and China’s Xi Jinping, who like him do not see a desire to renew their leaders.
Analysts said opposition to Lukashenko, which developed for years as Belarus’s economic scenery worsened, had crystallized through his dismissive reaction to the COVID-19 epidemic, which he called “coronapsicosis.”
While the country’s workload is higher (Belarus now has around 70,000 reported infections and nearly six hundred deaths, among the highest according to capital rates in Europe), it has moved away from closing orders and other mitigation measures, urging others to avoid contagion. taking saunas and drinking vodka.
As the outside world paid more attention as the days went on, the protests were at a tense time. Analysts warned that if he felt cornered, Lukashenko could simply claim a state of emergency, which amounts to martial law; would put the president in danger that the military would not be willing to assist him in the suppression of mass unrest.
“This may be just a turning point,” said Artyom Shraibman, Minsk analyst. “There is simply no way to oppose the course of change.”
The Times editor Tracy Wilkinson contributed to the report.