ASSOCIATED PRESS
Repression was not enough, threats were not needed. No one was afraid of Aleksandr Lukashenko’s latest decision to shut down the factories that were on strike. The Belarusians are still taking to the streets. Again against the re-elected president – among the many allegations of fraud – for the sixth consecutive time two weeks ago. Always for democracy, so that the country returns to the vote as soon as possible.
Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in the center of Minsk, the country’s capital. The “March for the new Belarus”, organized by the opposition, was preceded by the protest of a group of women against police violence. Authorities warned the population against participating in “illegal demonstrations” and riot officers with batons and water cannons were seen heading towards Independence Square. Four subway stations have been closed. But the determination to protest against Lukashenko is stronger than any warning from the regime. For his part, the president, after very timid initial openings, does not seem to give up a step. In a video, released in Belarus, he is seen getting off a helicopter after flying over the area from his residence. Walk briskly, holding a rifle and wearing a bulletproof vest. This too is a sign of strength, as the square fills up more and more.
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❗️Lukashenka in a bulletproof vest and with a machine gun in his hands walks through the territory of his residence (Video: Pool of the First) pic.twitter.com/VZeO3n3cKH
— URA.RU (@ura_ru) August 23, 2020
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But if the regime remains clinging to power, the opponents do not lose heart. Svetlana Tijanovskaya, the president’s opponent in the last elections, said she was ready to return to her country from Lithuania, where she took refuge, and start a dialogue with him. But she will only do so when all political prisoners are released, including the man she married. “I believe that will be the time when I will return to be with my husband and my people,” she said in an interview with Sky News from Vilnius. “If it will be necessary to talk to Lukashenko I don’t see why I shouldn’t do it,” he explained.
“I believe in our people”, he concluded, expressing confidence in the protests and launching an appeal to the police: “They cannot go against their mothers, their sisters and brothers, they must not do so”.
The Belarusian crisis continues to be monitored minute by minute abroad. From the Russians, guarding Lukashenko. For Sergei Lavrov, Moscow’s foreign minister, there is no evidence that the president did not win the election. The Minsk opposition, he continued, is following “the Venezuelan script” in an attempt to bring down Lukashenko: “The opposition proposes to negotiate with the current authorities only on terms of the Belarusian president leaving the scene. It is similar to what happened in Venezuela, when a legitimate president has been declared a pariah ”.
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Demonstrators blocked off the road to Independence square. People still coming in. Opposition hopes this rally will restore the momentum. Authorities warned against any demos. pic.twitter.com/L3yJajywGw
— Mary Ilyushina (@maryilyushina) August 23, 2020
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According to Lavrov, then, there are “extremist forces” which intend to provoke “a bloodbath”. Because, according to him, “there are those who want the peaceful situation in Belarus to precipitate violence, they try to provoke bloodshed so that the Ukrainian scenario is repeated”. Dalle colonne from El Paishowever, Josep Borrell – who compared Lukashenko to Maduro – states: “The European Union has no intention of transforming Belarus into a second Ukraine”. According to the High Representative of the Union for Foreign and Security Policy, we must “push for political reform, but avoid appearing as a distorting factor, which is how we could be perceived by the Russian side”. In his opinion, the problem for Belarusians “is not to choose between Russia and Europe, but to achieve freedom and democracy, which are fundamental values of the European Union” and which Brussels is committed to “supporting”.
The European Union, he said, “does not recognize Aleksandr Lukashenko as a democratically elected president, just as it does not recognize the president of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro” but “like it or not, they control the government and we must continue to deal with them” .
While the future of Belarus is being discussed from Brussels to Moscow, another threat comes from the palaces of Minsk. This time it is launched by Defense Minister Viktor Jrenin. The military, he said, is ready to intervene against the demonstrators if the monuments dedicated to the Belarusian dead during the Second World War are “attacked”. “In the last war Belarus lost a third of its population – said the minister according to the official agency Belta – thousands of monuments were erected in our country in memory of those sufferings, they are sacred to us”. And again: “We cannot calmly observe that acts are celebrated in these places with the flags of the fascists who organized the massacre of Belarusians, Russians, Jews and other peoples,” he said.
The reference is to the white and red flag that is seen very often in the squares in recent weeks. It was the symbol of the country between the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 and 1995 – the year in which with a referendum called by Lukashenko it was decided to change it – and it was used in Nazi-occupied Belarus during World War II.
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“We categorically warn that anyone who violates peace and order in these places will have to contend with the Army and the police”, concluded the minister, according to whom “it cannot be excluded that in the future destructive forces will try to take power causing generalized unrest and the use of arms “. Then, without naming names, the jab at Poland: “the most difficult situation can be created in the western regions of the country, where for some time we have been trying to convince our population of its ethnic and cultural affinity with some neighboring countries. “. Words – these, like Lukashenko’s – that do not stop the protest. And the desire of the Belarusians to change. After 26 years of regime.
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