Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the opposition candidate who many believe won the Aug. 9 presidential election, has fled Belarus under state pressure as country-wide demonstrations against alleged election fraud turned violent.
At least one death was recorded and dozens of people were injured after thousands of Belarusians took to the streets of at least 33 cities to protest the election results. Over 5,000 people were arrested in the first two days of the protest.
The demonstrations have turned the streets of Minsk and other cities into something resembling a war zone. Riot police and special forces of the Belarusian security agency, still called the KGB, fired rubber bullets, flash grenades and water cannons at protesters, sometimes leaving them seriously injured.
Multiple videos published through local channels on the Telegram messenger app showed police beating unarmed demonstrators.
Unlike a day earlier, this time the protesters didn’t hold back. Belarusian journalists working on the ground recorded demonstrators building barricades and shooting fireworks back at riot police. Some also fought police with their bare hands in an obvious mismatch.
The protests appeared to be self-organized. People in Minsk protested in multiple areas of the city without clear coordination. Requests for help were spread through local Telegram channels that closely followed the events on the streets.
Then, Tikhanovskaya disappeared, later resurfacing in Lithuania. On Aug. 11, she recorded a short video explaining that she had been forced to leave the country.
“God forbid you be faced with such a choice as I have faced,” she said.
Streets on fire
Protests erupted in Belarus after state-controlled exit polls declared Lukashenko the winner of the Aug. 9 election, contradicting unofficial polls that showed Tikhanovskaya far in the lead.
Prior to the election, Lukashenko had jailed his two main opponents. His third rival fled the country, fearing arrest.
Tikhanovskaya, the wife of one of those opponents, entered the race in the place of her husband and unexpectedly became the face of a popular rebellion at the polls.
Amnesty International has declared her husband, Sergei Tikhanovsky, to be a prisoner of conscience and demanded his immediate release.
The United States, Lithuania, Poland, Germany, and the European Union all deemed the elections to be unfair.
Belarusian demonstrators demanded a fair election, something their country has not seen since 1994.
After the first day of protests, when demonstrations occurred right after polling places closed, Telegram messenger channels in Belarus began urging the people to continue protesting on Aug. 10.
At 7 p.m., the streets of multiple Belarusian cities once again teemed with protesters.
Multiple amateur videos shared online showed riot police beating people who approached the city center with truncheons. Soon, after people gathered in groups, the police began firing rubber bullets which caused severe injuries to those they hit.
The Interior Ministry of Belarus has confirmed that one person was killed on the streets on Aug. 10, but didn’t name the victim.
A video published by Telegram channel Nexta Live, which has 1 million followers, showed a bus driver lying on the ground with severe injuries. A flash grenade had allegedly hit the bus cabin.
Nexta said that the bus driver had subsequently died. However, the Interior Ministry claimed that a man had been killed while trying to throw an explosive at police. The Kyiv Post could not independently confirm either claim. It is unclear what happened to the bus driver.
Videos published in the early morning hours of Aug. 11 showed the initially peaceful protests turn into riots.
Protesters began building barricades from trash cans and street fences and used fireworks to fight off the police. Multiple instances of fistfights between riot police and protesters were recorded across the country.
Two separate videos published after 2 a.m. showed a car deliberately striking riot police.
Journalists disappear
In the first two days of the nationwide protests, police injured, detained and disappeared multiple journalists.
Journalist Maksim Solopov, reporting for the independent Russian-language Meduza website, disappeared on the night of Aug. 9. Meduza has been unable to reach him for over 36 hours.
On Aug. 11 at around 2 a.m., Yahor Martsinovich, chief editor of the independent Belarusian news site Nasha Niva, disappeared. His colleagues also are unable to reach him. Earlier that day, Natallia Lubnieuskaja, a Nasha Niva journalist, was injured by a rubber bullet fired by the police. The incident was caught on tape.
Sopolov and Martsinovich are believed to be held in jail. They aren’t alone.
During the first day of protests, over 3,000 people were detained, according to the Interior Ministry of Belarus. The police further stated that the protests occurred in 33 cities across the country.
A video published on Aug. 11 shows police brutally beating dozens of people lying face down with their hands behind their backs, reportedly in the inner yard of the Oktyabersky Department of the Interior Ministry in Minsk.
Tikhanovskaya forced to flee
During the Aug. 9 election, Tikhanovskaya officially received only 9% of the vote. But many local election commissions gave her an unprecedented 80%. Exit polls conducted outside Belarusian embassies abroad gave her, on average, 90% of the vote.
On Aug. 10, Tikhanovskaya declared herself the winner and urged the people to stand up for their rights.
“We call on those who believe that their vote was stolen not to be silent,” she said on Aug. 10.
Then she disappeared.
Campaign spokesperson Anna Krasulina told the press that she lost contact with Tikhanovskaya after the candidate entered the building of the Central Election Commission on Aug. 10 to file an official complaint about the election results.
On the morning of Aug. 11, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Linas Linkevicius announced that Tikhanovskaya was in Lithuania and that she was safe. Linkevicius added that Tikhanovskaya had been interrogated by Belarusian authorities for up to 7 hours.
On Aug.11, Tikhanovskaya recorded a video in which she said that she had been forced to flee. In a tearful message, she called herself weak and concluded that “children are the most important thing in our lives.”
Then, a second video was released. It showed Tikhanovskaya in a different location, reading a pre-written statement calling on people not to resist the police. It didn’t take long for internet users to identify the location where the video was shot.
The couch and blinds in the video match those in the office of Lidia Yermoshina, head of the Belarusian Central Election Commission.
The opposition believes Tikhanovskaya was forced to issue the statement before fleeing Belarus.
Nationwide strike
The protest is far from over in Belarus. Now, employees of several state-owned enterprises have declared an indefinite strike.
On Aug. 11, the workers of a sugar factory in Zhlobino, the Minsk Tractor Works (MTZ), the Vasily Kozlov Minsk Electrical Plant and a number of other technical plants across the country came out in protest and went on strike.
A day prior, workers of the Belarus Steel Plant were the first to declare an indefinite strike.
Officials haven’t commented on the strikes.
According to independent news agency Belsat, strikers demand that the authorities release political prisoners and that the riot police stop using force against peaceful protesters.
Violence against protesters has also become a concern for foreign diplomats.
“We strongly condemn the ongoing violence against protesters and the detention of opposition supporters, as well as the use of internet shutdowns to prevent Belarusians from spreading information about elections and demonstrations,” U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in an official statement published on Aug. 10.
Pompeo added that the election in Belarus was not free nor fair.
The foreign ministers of Lithuania and Germany, the prime minister of Poland and 57 Ukrainian lawmakers all deemed the vote unfair.
“Harassment and violent repression of peaceful protesters has no place in Europe,” wrote President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen.
German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said on Aug. 10 that the European Union should review sanctions on Belarus it had previously lifted.
