Belarusian factory workers strike as women protest in the streets
THOUSANDS of factory workers at key industrial plants yesterday abandoned their posts to rally against the disputed re-election of Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko, raising the prospect that widespread strikes could finally end his 26-year rule.
At prominent factories, bosses anxiously sought to deny reports of workers downing tools and walking out in protest at Sunday’s result and the violent police crackdown that has ensued.
Meanwhile Yuri Karayev, the country’s internal affairs minister, was forced to deny that a revolution was under way, the Russian state news agency Tass reported.
Four days after Mr Lukashenko, a former Soviet collective farm boss often referred to as Europe’s last dictator, announced a landslide victory, the protests that began with Minsk’s middle class are coursing through working class neighbourhoods and the factory floors that form the country’s engine.
Anger at reports of widespread vote rigging, and the jailing or banning of most of his rivals, has turned to rage over police violence against protesters.
The capital Minsk has seen something resembling urban warfare, with police officers in full riot gear engaged in nightly pursuits of demonstrators.
Police have fired rubber bullets at passers-by, snatched drivers from their cars and roughed up residents for holding flowers in protest. In response, workers at Minsk’s iconic Tractor Works downed their tools yesterday to come out in protest outside the factory. Managers at the Tractor Works claimed there was no such walkout.
Meanwhile at the Belaz heavy machinery factory in the Minsk suburb of Zhodzina, workers yesterday marched to local government offices to demand Mr Lukashenko’s resignation, an end to violence, the release of all political prisoners and a new election. The factory’s press office insisted there was no strike.
Roman Golovchenko, the Belarusian prime minister, dismissed reports of industrial action as untrue, saying that they aim to “create a myth about some sort of destabilisation”. In a sign that support for the regime is beginning to fade even in state-owned media whose sole job has been to praise it, seven prominent TV anchors have resigned in protest.
Yesterday, groups of protesters thronged in the streets throughout the day, holding flowers and flashing Vsigns. At one church, around 100 people joined an interdenominational prayer against police violence.
“Christian believers cannot be indifferent to what’s happening,” Tikhon Tilkovsky, a pastor from the Holy Trinity parish of the Reformed Church in Minsk, said. “We have never seen this unity of Belarusians before. Support for this government is tiny, nothing as big as what the president tells us.”
Nearby, at least 2,000 women marched down the city’s main street, holding white flowers. Many spoke of their shock at countless stories of police violence against city residents.
“I want my vote for Tsikhanouskaya to be counted fairly,” 33-year-old Anastasia Kolossovskaya said of the opposition candidate Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who is now in Lithuania after she was reportedly forced to flee the country.
“I feel completely defenceless and powerless. There’s nothing we can do.”
More than 6,500 people have been detained at protests since Sunday, half of them in Minsk, and at least 100 people have been injured.
Dozens of doctors and nurses came out to the street outside their hospital in Minsk to protest against the government’s heavy-handed response. “We’ve been receiving so many young people who got seriously hurt and even maimed for life,” anaesthesiologist Anton Orkhamenko said. “Why do their lives have to be broken like that?”