Alexander Lukashenko promises fresh crackdown on Belarus protesters
The standoff in Belarus appears to be entering a decisive phase, with embattled president Alexander Lukashenko promising a fresh crackdown as protests continued.
On Friday evening, tens of thousands of protesters marched towards government buildings in central Minsk, holding flowers and signs demanding an end to violence and Lukashenko’s resignation. Gathering outside parliament, they faced off against a few dozen troops guarding the building.
The mood was peaceful and cheerful, with no threat from the crowd to storm the building. At 9pm, they turned around and left, shouting: “We’ll come back every day”.
For the past two days, riot police have not engaged protesters. However, in a sign that more violence could be imminent over the weekend, an angry Lukashenko appeared on television on Friday evening, ordering Belarusians not to take to the streets.
“You are being used, and our children are being used, as cannon fodder,” he said, blaming shadowy forces from “Poland, the Netherlands and Ukraine” who had arrived in Russia, and mentioning the anti-Kremlin politician Alexei Navalny. “Aggression against the country has already started,” he said.
A convoy of at least 20 military trucks and buses filled with riot police could be seen speeding towards the scene, and later an even longer convoy left a nearby area, without the troops being deployed.
After horrific violence from riot police earlier in the week, it is unclear whether commanders would back a new crackdown, given the way the protest mood has spread to almost all corners of Belarusian society over the past two days.
Earlier on Friday, the opposition candidate Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who left the country for neighbouring Lithuania after standing in Sunday’s presidential election, resurfaced in a video, calling on supporters to continue their protests against Lukashenko’s authoritarian regime.
It was the first sight of Tikhanovskaya since Monday when a hostage-style video was published, apparently recorded in the office of the Belarusian electoral commission, in which she asked people not to protest.
Tikhanovskaya stood against Lukashenko as a unified opposition candidate after her husband, a popular blogger who said he wanted to stand, was jailed. Her husband remains in jail, and it is believed Tikhanovskaya was threatened before leaving.
Officially she received 10% of the vote and Lukashenko 80%. The implausible result led to widespread protests in Minsk and across the country.
Tikhanovskaya cut a much more confident figure in Friday’s video, calmly claiming victory in the election and calling for more protests.
“Authorities turned peaceful demonstrations on the streets into a bloody battle,” she said, emphasising that the protests should remain peaceful. She asked the mayors of Belarusian towns to arrange for protests on Saturday and Sunday. A huge protest is planned for Sunday afternoon in Minsk and other cities.
“Where the votes were counted honestly, my support was between 60 and 70%,” she said in the video. “Belarusians will never want to live again under the previous regime.”
Her intervention will increase the pressure on Lukashenko, who has ruled
Belarus for 26 years but has prompted anger and disgust over the violence of this week.
More than 6,000 people were arrested over four nights of protests that followed his declaration of victory. Some have told the Guardian they were beaten and abused in prison, and as more prisoners are released it has become clear that torture was widespread.
The brutal repression has failed to quell the insurrectionary mood, and tens of thousands turned out to protest on Thursday and Friday.
The authorities took a number of somewhat conciliatory measures on those days in a bid to quell the protest mood, promising to release those detained and offering half-hearted apologies to some of those caught up in the violence. At least 2,000 prisoners were released on Friday.
The interior minister, Yuri Karayev, apologised to “bystanders” who had got caught up in the violence, though he claimed they had been manipulated by shadowy forces behind the protest, and he insisted the police had not used excessive force.
Whereas earlier in the week the news on state television featured sinister footage of beaten and dazed prisoners promising they would not protest again, on Thursday evening Lukashenko’s emissaries were appealing for calm.
“The president has listened to the opinions of worker collectives,” said Natalia Kochanova, the chair of the Belarusian senate. “It’s clear that none of us need losses and war. Minsk was always quiet and peaceful. Let’s stop this selfdestruction.”
However, the signs are that the authorities have lost the trust of the majority of the population. A group of several hundred teachers holding flowers was one of many protest columns making its way through central Minsk on Friday lunchtime. “We are here because we are meant to be an example to children, and we don’t want to live in lies any more,” said Svetlana, a maths teacher. Most passing cars honked their horns in support, and the protesters on the street swelled towards evening.
There were also reports of an increasing number of strikes by workers at factories across the country.
A 31-year-old miner who works for a huge state-controlled potash concern in the city of Salihorsk said the workers had demanded a meeting with the management and were insisting on new elections and the release of everyone detained in the violence.
“Everyone here is joining in, there are only a couple who aren’t,” said the miner.