Category Archives: Belarus

‘They were smashing me with batons’: detained Belarusians tell of jail abuse

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Savage attacks by prison guards and riot police follow election protests as Lukashenko holds on to power

People detained in Belarus during the past few days of unrest have told the Guardian about systematic mistreatment and abuse, suggesting that guards and riot police loyal to Alexander Lukashenko’s regime have terrorised thousands of Belarusians caught up in the crackdown on recent protests.

Those detained in police stations, jails and makeshift prisons spoke of ritual beatings, up to 55 women being crammed into a cell meant for two people and men who were kept in stress positions for hours on end. Leaked audio files and other testimony has corroborated the reports of widespread torture as Lukashenko tries to hold on to power.

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Belarus Nobel-prize winner tells Lukashenko: ‘Leave before it’s too late’

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Svetlana Alexievich warns of ‘civil war’ after unrest that followed Sunday’s disputed election result

Belarusian Nobel prize-winning writer Svetlana Alexievich has condemned police violence against protesters in her country and urged Alexander Lukashenko to go peacefully.

The 72-year-old author won the 2015 Nobel literature prize for her work chronicling the horrors of war and life under the repressive Soviet regime including the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.

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Belarus protests: more than 6,000 arrested, says interior ministry

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Opposition leaders jailed or driven out of country amid crackdown on protests over election results

Authorities in Belarus say they have arrested more than 6,000 people during three nights of violently suppressed demonstrations against vote-rigging in Sunday’s disputed presidential election, as more footage and accounts emerged of police beating and violently detaining protesters.

Opposition leaders have been jailed and driven out of the country in a massive crackdown following the election, which the election commission said was won in a landslide by President Alexander Lukashenko.

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Will knocking Belarus offline save president from protests?

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Alexander Lukashenko has cut off entire population’s internet to try to stifle election dissent

As he fights for his political survival, Alexander Lukashenko has taken a big gamble by cutting off the internet across most of Belarus.

Belarusians seeking to protest against his government have been mostly cut off from the outside world: mobile internet has been throttled and popular messaging apps have been disabled, leaving demonstrators scrambling to find wifi connections and working VPNs or proxies to get online and then sharing what news they can find.

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Svetlana Tikhanovskaya: from ‘Chernobyl child’ in Ireland to political limelight

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Host Henry Deane remembers Belarus’s opposition leader arriving in Roscrea at the age of 12

Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the woman who has been catapulted into political stardom in Belarus by her push to dislodge the man often referred to as Europe’s last dictator, may be an accidental challenger, standing in Sunday’s presidential election only because her opposition activist husband Sergei was arrested.

But a hint of the strength and resilience that has made her a courageous if unlikely opponent who has refused to accept Alexander Lukashenko’s claim to victory in a poll marred by vote-rigging may have been present at age of 12, when she arrived to spend a summer in rural Ireland.

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New leader or new crackdown? Belarus has entered a new era

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Experts compare situation with 1989 revolutions that toppled Europe’s communist regimes

For a man who has spent a quarter of a century building a political brand based on stability, there is no doubt that the events unfolding in Minsk will change politics in Belarus and the standing of its veteran leader Alexander Lukashenko forever.

What is not yet clear is whether the new political era that will follow the protests will be one of dynamic change and a new government, or one of a sustained and bloody crackdown.

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Belarus opposition candidate rejects election result after night of protests

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‘I will believe my own eyes,’ says Svetlana Tikhanovskaya after commission says Alexander Lukashenko won landslide

Share your reaction on the Belarus election result

The main opposition candidate in Belarus’s election has rejected the official results that gave President Alexander Lukashenko a landslide victory and her team has vowed to stay in the country to campaign for a change of power.

“I will believe my own eyes – the majority was for us,” Svetlana Tikhanovskaya told reporters in the capital, Minsk, on Monday, after widespread reports of vote-tampering in Sunday’s election.

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Belarus election: Lukashenko’s claim of landslide victory sparks widespread protests

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Riot police deployed in Minsk and about 20 other cities in some of the biggest clashes in the country’s history

Clashes broke out in cities across Belarus on Sunday evening as riot police used rubber bullets, flash grenades, teargas and water cannons to quash protests against the results of the contested presidential election.

Alexander Lukashenko, who has ruled for 26 years, claimed he had won a landslide victory in an election marred by accusations of vote-rigging. The election commission claimed Lukashenko was ahead with 82% of the vote in preliminary results on Sunday evening. The opposition, led by Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, had held some of the country’s largest political rallies since the days of the Soviet Union.

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Belarus presidential election: opposition candidate goes into hiding on eve of vote

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Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who is challenging incumbent Alexander Lukashenko in Sunday’s vote, fled her home after police detained staffers

Belarus’s opposition candidate for president went into hiding the night before challenging longtime leader Alexander Lukashenko on Sunday in the country’s most unpredictable election in a generation.

Candidate Svetlana Tikhanovskaya fled her apartment after police detained several senior staffers in what critics called an attempt to scare the opposition ahead of the crucial vote.

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The Guardian view on Belarus: slippers and democracy | Editorial

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A remarkable election campaign by the wife of a jailed blogger is causing major problems for ‘Europe’s last dictator’

It takes unusual courage to take on Alexander Lukashenko in an election. In 2010, for example, when the president of Belarus was seeking a fourth term of office, a number of his opponents were arrested and charged with organising mass disorder on polling day. But if your spouse has been jailed and your family threatened, the stakes of standing against the man often described as “Europe’s last dictator” must seem unbearably high.

This is the challenge that 37-year-old Svetlana Tikhanovskaya has accepted, ahead of Belarus’s latest exercise in pseudo-democracy this Sunday. With no previous political experience, Ms Tikhanovskaya took over the presidential candidacy of her husband, Sergei, a well-known blogger, in May, after he was ruled out of the race and imprisoned on trumped-up charges. So far, she is knocking it out of the park.

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Is this the beginning of the end for ‘Europe’s last dictator’?

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Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus faces threats from all sides as the country decides whether to give him a fifth term as president

Alexander Lukashenko is under pressure like never before. The past week has brought astonishing scenes in Belarus: an opposition rally hailed as the largest since the fall of the Soviet Union; the arrest of 33 Russian mercenaries allegedly sent to destabilise the country; and an admission from Lukashenko that after months of minimising the coronavirus epidemic, he had tested positive for the virus.

It is likely that the president, who has held power for 25 years, will claim victory in the 9 August elections and remain the country’s leader. But he is on the defensive, facing an energised opposition amid bitter spats with Russia over economic integration, and with the west over human rights. It is the most precarious moment of his career.

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Women unite in maverick attempt to unseat Lukashenko in Belarus

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Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, Maria Kolesnikova and Veronika Tsepkalo challenge president’s 25-year rule

Three women are spearheading a maverick opposition campaign for next month’s presidential election in Belarus, transforming the country’s politics as they attempt to unseat Alexander Lukashenko, who has ruled for 25 years.

At their head is Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, a reluctant candidate who has grown increasingly confident in her challenge to Lukashenko.

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Thousands attend Belarus military parade despite pandemic – video

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Thousands of people, including elderly veterans of the second world war, turned out for Belarus’s Victory Day parade despite the coronavirus epidemic. Images from the parade showed large crowds as the country’s leader, Alexander Lukashenko, boasted of holding the only parade in the former Soviet Union to mark the defeat of Nazi Germany

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Victory Day: Belarus swaggers on parade as Russians leave Red Square deserted

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In a tale of two cities, Moscow keeps its distance while in Minsk, thousands turn out for the traditional military spectacular

In any other year, hundreds of thousands of Russians would have marched with portraits of relatives who fought in the second world war in a memorial called the Immortal Regiment.

But on Saturday, the images of Soviet veterans and their families floated past on Russian television, a public vigil adapted for the era of social isolation.

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Upcoming Russian military exercises a prelude to invading a NATO country? Simply absurd

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Belarus: NATO expansion in Eastern Europe 'inflames confrontation' - Lavrov Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov held a joint press conference with his Belarusian counterpart Vladimir Makei following their meeting in Minsk, Monday. In less than a month Russia and neighboring Belarus are to conduct defensive military exercises which are routinely scheduled every four years and within their own territory.