Most Westerners do not spend much time thinking about Eastern Europe, and certainly not about Belarus specifically. For those whose education took place before the 1990s, the borders of Belarus and a number of other now-post-Soviet countries were not even outlined on maps. For those of us educated since then, noticing it on a map when our teacher pointed out Russia is likely the most exposure to Belarus we had.
This lack of exposure has consequences. Belarus has been in the news more over the past twelve months than it has been at any other point in my lifetime. However, due to the above, even highly educated consumers of news media often lack critical context surrounding articles or news segments about Belarus. When this does not result in ignoring the content entirely, it often results in a poor understanding of the events at play. This is especially true right now, as understanding news coverage over the coming weeks regarding today’s (Sunday, May 23rd, 2021) forced grounding of a flight and arrest of a journalist will require understanding the developments of the past year. My aim in this article is to provide a connected narrative that will allow you to better understand the snippets of information about Belarus on your Twitter feed, television, and newspaper-of-choice moving forward.
In 1994, following the enactment of the Belarusian Constitution, Alexander Lukashenko [Bel: Alyaksandr Lukashenka] was the first democratically elected President of Belarus. He has been in power ever since, and Belarusian elections have not been considered democratic by the international community since 1995. Tomorrow marks exactly one year since protests began in response to Lukashenko announcing that he would run for “reelection” (for a sixth term) in the Belarusian 2020 presidential election. These protests were sparked by Sergei Tikhanovsky [Bel: Siarhei Tsikhanouski]—a prominent Belarusian activist and Lukashenko’s main competition—who had been publicizing Lukashenko’s lack of popular support across Belarus.
Tikhanovsky was arrested only a few days into the protests and was later charged (without any evidence) with working for a foreign government. He remains imprisoned to this day, though the charges against him have since shifted to his role in launching the protests. Tikhanovsky’s arrest did not quell the protests, which grew larger and larger throughout the summer despite the intense police violence protesters faced and the daily possibility of arrest.
A well-known opposition candidate, Viktar Babaryka, was arrested in June on falsified financial charges. He also remains in custody. As with the arrest of Tikhanovsky, this only energized the protesters and solidified their resolve. It also launched the presidential campaign of Sergei Tikhanovsky’s wife, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya [Russ: Svetlana Tikhanovskaya]. (For some reason unbeknownst to me, Western media uses the Russian transliteration for Sergei Tikhanovsky and the Belarusian transliteration for Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya.) Maria Kalesnikava, Viktar Babaryka’s campaign manager, and Veranika Tsepkala [Russ: Veronika Tsepkalo], the wife of opposition politician and former Belarusian Ambassador to the United States Valery Tsepkala [Russ: Valery Tsepkalo] joined Tsikhanouskaya’s campaign and the trio became the face of the Belarusian opposition.
The bravery of these women cannot be understated. Tsikhanouskaya’s husband was imprisoned on counterfeit charges and she had sent her children abroad due to threats on their lives in Belarus. The high-profile candidate of the campaign Kalesnikava ran had been imprisoned on false charges. Tsepkala’s husband and children had fled Belarus for their safety. They were intimately aware of the immense risk of their activism.
The election—which was not monitored by the standard international observer, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe—took place on August 9th, 2020. Alexander Lukashenko declared himself the victor with 80% of the vote and 84% voter turnout. The government claimed that Tsikhanouskaya received 10% of the vote. State-controlled polling before the election indicated approximately 70% of Belarusians supported Lukashenko’s candidacy. Russian government-run exit polls reported that Lukashenko would win 80% of the vote. Both of these polls reported around 7% support for Tsikhanouskaya. However, none of these data are reliable and none of it is accepted by the international community.
Belarusian elections are widely known to be rigged, which gives the country its moniker “Europe’s last dictatorship.” Polling by the Belarusian Institute of Sociology in early 2020—well before the protests began—revealed that 11% of Minsk residents trusted Belarusian elections. That same polling indicated that less than 25% of respondents supported Lukashenko’s regime. In Belarus, presidential candidates must collect 100,000 signatures to appear on the ballet; government workers were forced to either sign for Lukashenko’s campaign or lose their job, which also suggests low levels of voluntary public support.
Under the Belarusian election code, article 55, individual polling stations have to display their vote counts at the polling location as well as send the results to the Central Election Commission. Of the ~6000 voting stations in Belarus, ~4500 did not do this, apparently with no consequence. Only the final, aggregate count released by the Central Election Commission is considered official and reported by the state-run media. Three independent platforms—”The Vote,” “Aurochs,” and “Honest People”—analyzed the data from the ~1500 polling locations that did display their vote totals and compared it to the data the Central Election Commission released. In order for the official data not to be fraudulent, Tskhanouskaya had to receive less than three percent of the vote from the ~4500 polling stations that violated Belarusian’s election code article 55 by not displaying their location’s totals. This is simply not plausible.
Additionally, “The Vote” campaign asked Belarusian voters to photograph their ballots and submit them. Of the 545,947 ballot photos received, 536,546 were in favor of Tsikhanouskaya. The Central Election Commission recorded 588,622 votes for Tsikhanouskaya (and over 4.6 million for Lukashenko). This would mean that over 90% of individuals who voted for Tsikhanouskaya submitted photos of their ballot to “The Vote,” while only 0.014% of those who voted for Lukashenko submitted theirs. Moreover, voters reported that privacy curtains had been taken down, a fear tactic allowing any government official watching to see individual constituents’ votes. Furthermore, while paper ballots are supposed to be preserved for six months, RadioFreeEurope’s “Svaboda” reported ballot-burning just days after the election.
The release of the official election outcome resulted in an immediate growth of the pro-democracy protests. This increase in scale was met by an abhorrent escalation of police violence, which included stun grenades, tear gas, lead grenades, flashbangs, rubber bullets, water cannons, and physical beatings. Arrests were widespread and seemingly arbitrary. At least one protester was killed by an explosive of some sort. Journalists and those recording the events were targeted. The internet was shut down. The Belarusian government requested military support from Russia in case it needed it to handle protesters. Police were told to “shoot to kill” if they were doing so in self-defense.
Lukashenko held an anti-protest in which his supporters were bussed in from across Belarus. State media did not report this fact, but reported that 65,000 people attended the rally. Journalists reported 5,000.
Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya was detained by authorities upon filing a complaint about the official results released by the Central Election Commission. The next time Tsikhanouskaya’s location was public, she was in Lithuania. Videos from the 7 hours she was detained in which Tsikhanouskaya is visibly shaken and uncomfortable were then released. In them, Tsikhanouskaya refers to herself as a “weak woman” and says her decision to leave for Lithuania is her own. She reads off a script, telling protesters to disperse peacefully and respect the election results released by the Central Election Commission. They are reminiscent of hostage videos.
It has since been revealed that her exile was, at least partially, in exchange for the release of her campaign manager Maria Moroz, who had been arrested in the protests, and an allowance of Moroz to leave the country. Additionally, once safe, she immediately reaffirmed her belief that the election results were counterfeit. Many Western countries formally do not accept the Belarusian election outcome. Lithuania recognizes Tsikhanouskaya as the official leader of Belarus, with others recognizing the organization she founded in exile—the Belarusian Coordination Council for the Transfer of Power—as legitimate.
In early September, Maria Kalesnikava was kidnapped by masked men not wearing any uniform. Other members of Tsikhanouskaya’s opposition team disappeared the same day; it was revealed soon after that they were in police custody. Kalesnikava has been imprisoned ever since, with her trial repeatedly delayed. One of her lawyers was stripped of the right to practice law in Belarus, another is under house arrest. Veranika Tsepala, like Tsikhanouskaya, was able to flee Belarus.
Despite the exile and arrest of almost every public figure in the opposition, protests have continued without pause since last August. Many thousands of Belarusians have been arrested, with more reported daily. There have been reports from Amnesty International and the United Nations of torture, with the UN citing over 2000 cases. Several protesters have died and dozens more have gone missing. The white-and-red flag of independent Belarus—a symbol of the months—long protests-has been banned, with Belarusians now being arrested for simply wearing a combination of red and white.
Journalists have consistently been targeted, with the Belarusian Association of Journalists estimating 400 journalists had been detained or arrested, with over 100 already sentenced to prison. Human Rights Watch has collected reports of journalists being beaten, denied medical care, and even threatened with losing custody of their children.
Journalists Katsiaryna Barysevich, Ekaterina Andreyeva, and Daria Chultsova were sentenced to prison for reporting on the death of Raman Bandarenka, an activist who was beaten to death by police last November. Police claimed to have found him drunk and already injured, but Barysevich produced medical documents proving Bandarenka was not inebriated, and Andreyeva and Chultsova published footage of police brutally beating him. Despite relatives of Bandarenka—both in Barysevich’s closed trial and publicly since then—stating that they gave Barysevich permission to publish the medical report, she was charged with breaching medical confidentiality and subsequently imprisoned. These are just a few examples of the many horrific violations against the rights of journalists.
This brings us to the events of today, March 23rd (yesterday at the time of publishing). Ryanair flight FR4978, carrying 171 passengers from Athens to Vilnius, was forced to land in Minsk—with cooperation ensured by a MiG-29 fighter jet—just two minutes before entering Lithuanian airspace and despite being closer to its final destination than Minsk. Belarus, which the flight was neither flying to nor from, claims to have been made aware of a bomb threat on the flight, though no proof of this has been provided and no bomb was found on board. However, they did find and arrest a Belarusian journalist who is wanted for reporting on the anti-Lukashenko protests in 2020. How convenient.
Raman Pratasevich [Russ: Roman Protasevich], the detained journalist, is a 26-year-old Belarusian activist and a co-founder of NEXTA, a Poland-based, Belarus-focused telegram channel now edited by Tadeusz Giczan that broadcast many of the protests in Belarus. This was enough for Belarus to declare him a terrorist and classify NEXTA as an extremist organization. Pratasevich faces at least 12 years in prison. Fellow passengers described the 26-year-old’s fear, including Pratasevich shaking and saying that he would “face the death penalty” if they landed in Belarus, the only country in Europe yet to end the practice. They also indicated that the Belarusian authorities quickly separated Pratasevich from the rest of the passengers. His arrest was promptly celebrated in a now-deleted Tweet from the Belarusian government.
Many Western officials have stated the obvious: it appears to be a pre-planned operation and a falsified bomb threat with the sole intention of arresting a journalist. Additionally, it has since come to light that Lukashenko personally ordered the MiG-29 to force the flight to land.
As I finish writing this, it is almost 2:00am CT/GMT-5 on Monday, May 24th. It is morning in Europe, with an EU summit beginning in Brussels due to discuss the events in Belarus. I imagine much more news will be published about this over the coming days and weeks, and I sincerely hope this helps make the picture clearer.
Держитесь, друзья.
Originally published at https://noahcoen.com.
