Lukashenko hangs on as protesters head home and strikes fizzle out
One week ago, it looked like it could be the end of Alexander Lukashenko’s iron-fisted 26-year rule. But after days of declining protests in the aftermath of a rigged election, the anti-government movement has been starved of oxygen and many believe he will stay put.
Mr Lukashenko was publicly booed during a factory tour in the days following the vote, and he seemed to be on the cusp of being toppled by a growing opposition movement. But now, industrial strikes are already fizzling out.
“Some workshops that went on strike have given up under management pressure, some are holding out,” said Andrei, a worker at a fertiliser plant in the border town of Hrodna, told The Sunday Telegraph.
“Workers are just too scared,” he said, motioning to three policemen standing by the gate and one plainclothes officer filming the workers and the protesters.
But it was the Lukashenko regime that was initially nervous. In what was largely seen as a death knell for Mr Lukashenko, who unleashed riot police on peaceful demonstrators across the country following his dubious re-election on Aug 9, blue-collar workers – Belarus’s lifeblood – started to rebel. On Friday Aug 14, several hundred workers of Hrodna Azot plant poured out of the factory gate to join the city’s largest protest in history.
Dozens of factories across the country, including the hugely important Minsk Tractor Works, last week were on strike, staging walkouts and halting production in the most palpable blow to the ruling regime.
Earlier that week, the country’s president was heckled by workers at a Minsk factory and left in a helicopter with the crowds of protesters gathering outside. Many were comparing Mr Lukashenko’s position to that of Romania’s dictator Nikolai Ceausescu in 1989.
Several days later, some workers had their entry passes suspended and some received legal warnings, threatened with dismissal unless they got back to work. The general strike never happened.
“One of the main reasons why Lukashenko has survived is the fact that attempts to intimidate workers were successful, and strikes have stopped growing by leaps and bounds,” Minsk-based political analyst Artyom Shraybman told The Telegraph, adding that the workers at state-owned factories are too scared to lose their stable jobs. Their grievances at this point are not about the economy but about values.
In a sign of just how terrified the Belarusian dictator is of the workers’ movement, investigators on Friday questioned Sergei Dylevsky, a worker from the Minsk Tractor Works, for several hours in connection with his role in an ad hoc opposition council that Mr Lukashenko is portraying as an illegal attempt to topple him.
“They have been trying hard to intimidate workers but it’s not like the strikes have stopped altogether – we’re taking a pause to find legal backing for industrial action,” Mr Dylevsky said after the questioning. “Workers are too tough to be cowed into submission.”
Like the rest of the country, the town of Hrodna near the border with Poland and Lithuania rose up last week after the brutal police crackdown following Mr Lukashenko’s re-election.
Three nights of savage beatings by riot police and two days with no internet connection triggered a wave of demonstrations and industrial strikes that gripped the city’s factories.
Feeling the heat of the protests, Hrodna’s City Hall on Monday formally agreed to meet some of the protesters’ demands, allowing them to rally on the main square, vowing to prevent further violence and even giving them air time on state-owned TV.
Police stopped harassing people and disappeared from the streets. But like in the rest of the country, the victory was short-lived. On Thursday, less than 1,000 people listlessly roamed the vast main square with the Lenin statue in the middle as a loudspeaker in a patrol police car was warning demonstrators about an unlawful assembly.
“People got tired, and the opposition needs to come up with something new,” 69-year old Nikolay Korniychenko said as demonstrators chanted “Go away!” aimed at Mr Lukashenko.
“The pressure on workers has been too much. They pressure your family and friends, and people stay put.”
Nationwide rallies last Sunday showed an unprecedented show of force of the leaderless opposition against Mr Lukashenko. But the euphoria that filled the streets of Belarusian cities proved hard to sustain as the opposition did not win a single major concession from the government.
“He doesn’t care about anyone but himself,” Mr Korniychenko said of President Lukashenko. “I can’t imagine how we can keep on living with him. How can we?”
Mr Lukashenko yesterday ordered his defence minister to take “stringent measures” to defend the country’s territorial integrity.
He denounced the protests, which he said were receiving support from Western countries, and ordered the army to defend western Belarus, which he described as “a pearl”.
“It involves taking the most stringent measures to protect the territorial integrity of our country,” he said.