Reporting on Belarus: courage, violence and
'creepers' with cameras
Belarus
Our correspondent on how a nation trying to live at
arm’s length to its own government finally decided to take action
Shaun
Walker
Shaun
Walker Central and eastern Europe correspondent
Sun 30 Aug
2020 18.00 BST
It had been
clear for a while that discontent with Alexander Lukashenko’s 26-year rule in
Belarus was on the rise, but it came as a surprise to most observers – and to
the protesters themselves – at just how quickly it has turned into a movement
threatening to topple his regime. The events in the country over the past three
weeks have been some of the most fascinating, fast-moving and unpredictable of
any story I’ve covered.
I arrived
in Minsk on 11 August, two days after Lukashenko declared victory in elections
with an implausible 80% of the vote. The protests that followed had been
ruthlessly suppressed, and on the evening I showed up, riot police in
balaclavas were pulling people out of their cars at random and beating them up.
Those
people still brave enough to go out protesting were chased into courtyards,
pummelled and then taken to a notorious prison on Okrestina Street on the
city’s outskirts. In the days after, people released from there would tell
horrific stories of abuse.
Being a
journalist provided some protection but not much: dozens were picked up by riot
police and some assaulted; one American photographer, clearly wearing press
identification, was shot at.
My first
day in Minsk was also challenging because the authorities had completely shut
down internet access across the country. Using a medley of VPNs, I could just
about check my email on my apartment wifi, but nothing else, and mobile
internet did not work at all. It was a reminder of what being a journalist in
the pre-internet era must have been like, with the difference that now all the
readers abroad had access to Twitter and breaking news; it was only we on the
ground who had no idea what was happening outside.
Lukashenko has never had pretensions to be
totalitarian, and so it was much less stressful to co-exist in parallel with
his kind of system than with its Soviet predecessor: don’t watch state TV,
don’t become active in politics, buy yourself an iPhone and get on with your
life
After the
initial post-election violence, things calmed down, but there was always menace
in the background. Columns of army trucks, the shields of the riot troops
packed inside bulging against the tarpaulin, were regularly on the move
throughout town. Vans with darkened windows and no plates could often be seen
lurking on street corners, men in balaclavas sitting in the front seats; I’ll
never look at a Ford Transit in the same way again.
One night I
came home to find two police in full riot gear waiting outside my apartment
block’s entrance. They were probably not for me, but, not wanting to begin a
discussion, I walked swiftly past and imposed on a friend for the night.
Heavy-set
plain-clothed observers, known locally as tikhari (something like “creepers”),
were ubiquitous. At protests, they walked by, ostentatiously filming everyone
in attendance on camcorders. It was always possible to tell if Lukashenko was
in the vicinity by the sudden increase in their numbers. At a speech he gave in
the main square one Sunday, it seemed like half the crowd were wearing
earpieces.
This
sinister system had always been lurking underneath the surface of what is
otherwise a pleasant, laid-back and friendly country. Everyone in Belarus knew
what kind of government they had, but many felt they could live a decent life
parallel to the state rather than in opposition to it – a mode of living that
was known as “internal emigration” in Soviet times.
“It’s hard
to believe that all of this stuff can still happen in the 21st century, in the
age of artificial intelligence, satellites, Tesla and iPhones,” Maria
Kolesnikova, a convivial and fearless flautist who has become one of the
figureheads of the opposition movement, told me. But maybe, in fact, access to
those things makes it easier. Lukashenko has never had pretensions to be
totalitarian, and so it was much less stressful to co-exist in parallel with
his kind of system than with its Soviet predecessor: don’t watch state
television, don’t become active in politics, buy yourself an iPhone and get on
with your life.
The
violence after the election changed this equation. It showed that living a parallel
life was no longer possible – that anyone could get caught up in state
repression. Over and over again, people told me they had never had much love
for Lukashenko, but now realised it was time to turn their passive distaste
into active resistance. There was a real sense of catharsis at the huge,
carnival-like rallies held in Minsk the past two Sundays, a delight at finally
being able to say something that had remained unsaid for so long.
It’s not
only the “creative class” of young professionals who are protesting. It’s all
kinds of people who just a few years ago might have been pro-Lukashenko:
factory workers, rural grandmothers and even some state employees. Early on in
my trip, I mentioned I was a journalist to a middle-aged cashier in a shop, whom
I had presumed was bound to be a Lukashenko fan. “What do you think, are we
going to win? Are we finally going to kick that bastard out?” was her reply, to
my surprise.
Lukashenko,
living in a coddled information bubble surrounded by sycophants, has appeared
genuinely surprised by the scale of the discontent. His PR team has wheeled out
the same tropes the Kremlin used successfully in Ukraine six years ago, about
neo-Nazi radicals trying to bring chaos and sow discord with Russia.
In Ukraine,
there was a kernel of truth to expand and distort, as well as a divided country
to play with, but in Belarus it just sounds ridiculous. As one person put it to
me: “You send men in balaclavas to pick us off the streets, imprison us and
beat us up, and we’re the fascists here?”
It’s
incredibly difficult to predict what will happen next, with so many variables
in play. Will people inside Lukashenko’s close circle finally mount a challenge
to him, realising that he’s become more of a liability than a saviour? Will he
crack down violently, possibly leading part of the protest movement to become
radicalised? Will Russia intervene to replace him, or force a weak Lukashenko
into huge concessions?
The only
thing that is certain is that Belarus is not going to be boring over the next
weeks and months.
I left the
country inspired by the power, dignity and resolve of the protesters, but also
feeling that the example of Belarus was a warning to people living “parallel
lives”, whether in dictatorships or democracies, of the dangers of extended
political apathy. That feeling was summed up by a dark joke that someone had
painted on to a poster at Sunday’s protest:
“Do you
know which concentration camp we’re being taken to?”
“Oh no, I
don’t, actually: I’m not interested in politics.”
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