On August 9, after the voting in the Belarusian presidential election had concluded, President Alyaksandr Lukashenka was declared the winner, purportedly taking an overwhelming 80 percent of the vote. Activists took to the streets of the capital, Minsk, and other cities to protest and make it known that they neither accept nor believe the count that handed Mr. Lukashenka, who has been in power since 1994, a sixth term in office. The police reacted with stark brutality for all the world to see, using flash grenades, water cannons and rubber bullets against the peaceful demonstrators, kicking protesters and beating them with batons. Hundreds were injured.
The opposition claims that Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya won the election and that the results announced by the authorities were fixed. Indeed, the signs were already there when early voting began on August 4. There were numerous reports of ballot stuffing and vote-rigging. Prior to the balloting, several independent candidates for the presidency were prevented from registering, and candidates and their staffs were subjected to intimidation tactics.
The Belarusian presidential election has been condemned as neither free nor fair by the United States and the European Union. Canada called for the results of the election “to reflect the will of the people.” And the recently established regional grouping called the Lublin Triangle said its members – Lithuania, Poland and Ukraine – “are deeply concerned with escalation of the situation in Belarus after the presidential elections and call upon the authorities to refrain from the use of force.”
Ms. Tsikhanouskaya, who according to the results released by the authorities had 9.9 percent of the vote, is a stay-at-home mom who bravely became a presidential candidate after her husband, vlogger Syarhey Tsikhanouski, was arrested and blocked from registering as a candidate. RFE/RL noted that the Belarusian Investigative Committee had said Mr. Tsikhanouski and seven others were charged “with the organization and preparation of actions that severely violated public order” – rallies at which signatures were collected for potential independent presidential candidates. Ms. Tsikhanouskaya’s campaign platform, it must be noted, was simple and spoke volumes: she promised that, if elected, she would hold a new free and fair election for president of Belarus.
According to calculations of the monitoring organization Golos, Ms. Tsikhanouskaya actually won 80 percent of the vote. When the candidate attempted to register a complaint about the provisional results, she was detained for seven hours and apparently given an offer she could not refuse. She fled Belarus, saying she had made a very difficult decision for the sake of her children. Ms. Tsikhanouskaya has been granted safe haven by neighboring Lithuania, where her children had been sent before the election.
Nobel Prize laureate Svetlana Alexievich said the Belarusian people are “absolutely sure” that Mr. Lukashenka lost the election, and she condemned the police violence in her country, forthrightly stating: “the authorities have declared war on their people.” Furthermore, she told RFE/RL on August 12 that President Lukashenka should step down before he “plunge[s] the people into a terrible abyss, into the abyss of civil war.”
The BBC reported on August 13 that the Internal Affairs Ministry says it has already detained some 6,700 people. Meanwhile, the nonviolent protests are continuing, and there are reports of workers’ strikes and walkouts in several major cities. The latest news from Belarus: women dressed in white and bearing flowers are demonstrating to protest police brutality and joining hands in what they call chains of solidarity.
Clearly, the people of Belarus are standing up to the “last dictator of Europe” to demand change and, above all, freedom of choice to determine the future of their country.
We stand with the people of Belarus!