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Opposition leader Tikhanovskaya wants help to return to Belarus
Opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya wants to return to Belarus from exile abroad and called for the help of the international community, in comments to her followers on the Telegram messaging app on Tuesday. She said the case of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who was detained immediately on returning to Russia, showed that the support of the global community was necessary. Tikhanovskaya, who is wanted in Belarus, is currently living in exile in Lithuania, following her country's disputed presidential elections and ensuing unrest. Tikhanovskya ran in the August 9 elections in wh...
DPA
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Opposition leader Tikhanovskaya wants help to return to Belarus
Opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya wants to return to Belarus from exile abroad and called for the help of the international community, in comments to her followers on the Telegram messaging app on Tuesday. She said the case of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who was detained immediately on returning to Russia, showed that the support of the global community was necessary. Tikhanovskaya, who is wanted in Belarus, is currently living in exile in Lithuania, following her country's disputed presidential elections and ensuing unrest. Tikhanovskya ran in the August 9 elections in wh...
DPA
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Germany's foreign minister Maas against ice hockey worlds in Belarus
Germany's foreign minister Heiko Maas said he's in favour of withdrawing the ice hockey world championships from Belarus due to the repression of pro-democracy movements. "Anyone who is serious about solidarity with Belarus cannot seriously want to hold a world championship in this situation," the politician wrote on Twitter on Thursday. "This would be the biggest PR gift to [Alexander] Lukashenko and a disastrous sign to protesters. I hope organizers can understand that too," he added. Minsk and the Latvian capital Riga are scheduled to host the May 21-June 6 but there has been international ...
DPA
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In Belarus, Lukashenka's rule endures 2020 — can it survive 2021?
“Past the expiry date, 1994-2020″ reads this placard at a protest in Minsk, August 2020. Lukashenka became President of Belarus in 1994. Photo CC BY-NC 2.0: Natallia Rak / Flickr. Some rights reserved. This year, Belarusians have paid a heavy price for resisting Alyaksandr Lukashenka. His attempt to claim a sixth consecutive presidential term in the August 9 election prompted the largest wave of protests in the country's post-Soviet history. When hundreds of thousands of peaceful demonstrators took to the streets of major cities, the authorities unleashed violence on a similarly historic scale...
Global Voices
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Argentina, Belarus kick off vaccine campaigns with Russia's Sputnik V
Argentina and Belarus have begun administering the Russian-made Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine to its populations, local media reported. Russia became the first country to introduce a vaccine against the novel coronavirus five months ago, in August, with the state-produced Sputnik V vaccine. But the vaccine, endorsed by government officials while it was still undergoing clinical trials, has courted controversy among the international scientific community amid questions of whether it was sufficiently tested. The Telam news agency reported that Argentina's vaccination campaign was launched across...
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In Belarus, a new civic culture is born out of recycled historical symbols in urban yards
Minsk's industrial suburbs united, with their own white-red-white flags: Altayskaya, Anharskaya, Sokal, Partyzanski district and Shabany. The latter is the most stigmatised district of the Belarusan capital, often compared to Harlem in New York. Photo by Kanstancin Kasiak, used with permission. In Belarus, people continue to resist and protest, having in their majority refused to recognize the results of the August 9 presidential election in which Alyaksandr Lukashenka claimed a sixth consecutive term. Every Sunday, massive protest marches continue to take place in the capital Minsk, some bein...
Global Voices
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How global tech companies enable the Belarusian regime — and the Belarusian revolution
Protest rally against Lukashenka in Minsk, capital of Belarus. Photo CC BY-SA 3.0: Homoatrox / Wikimedia Commons#/media/File:2020Belarusianprotests%E2%80%94Minsk,30August_p0064.jpg)\. Some rights reserved\. Belarusians continue to protest against longtime ruler Alyaksandr Lukashenka, braving police violence and the cold. As the EU prepares itsthird package of sanctions against Belarusian officials and enterprises, demands are growing for the West to apply greater economic pressure, in particular to consider banning the supply of certain IT products. Could such sanctions really work? It’s true ...
Global Voices
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Join us LIVE on December 14 for ‘Belarus 2020: Still Uploading’
Join Global Voices on December 14 at 3pm UTC/GMT for the first in our GV Insights series of virtual conversations: “Belarus 2020: Still Uploading?”—a lively discussion on the 2020 Belarusian revolution with experts from Belarus and the region and members of the Global Voices community. The event will be live-streamed on Zoom and Facebook Live. Following the August 9 presidential elections, Belarusian society fractured along political lines, with one faction supporting Alyaksandr Lukashenka, who has held power in the country since 1994, and the other supporting main opposition candidate Sviatla...
Global Voices
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Belarusians mourn the death of young opposition supporter
Detail from an illustration of Raman Bondarenka by Belarusian artist Ania Redko, 2020. Used with permission.Belarus is in mourning. On November 20, thousands of protesters arrived at the Church of the Resurrection in the capital of Minsk to pay their respects to Raman Bondarenko, a 31-year-old activist who died in police custodyThe mourners were not deterred by the cold. Winter has done little to diminish the protests which have seized the country since presidential elections in August. Their catalyst was an attempt by Alyaksandr Lukashenka, who has ruled Belarus since 1994, to stay in power f...
Global Voices
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In the heat of political crisis, Belarus launches first nuclear power plant
Astravets nuclear power plant, Belarus, 2020. Photo (c): Hanna Valynets, used with permission.Since August, Belarus has been rocked by mass protests and strikes. The authorities try not to pay attention, for they are preoccupied with a no less historic development — the construction of a new nuclear power plant. That is controversial in a country which suffered greatly from the 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe in neighbouring Ukraine. Concern at the state of democracy dominates Belarusian public life, but alongside it another urgent conversation continues — about the country’s past experience with n...
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