Belarus: A nation’s struggle for freedom
By: Ruairidh Irwin
Tags: Freedom, Lukashenko, Belarus, Democracy, Revolution

Peaceful protestors are bombarded with rubber bullets and water cannons, and the explosions of flash grenades are so loud that they can be heard from Nemiha, almost 5 kilometres away. The authorities report making 3,000 arrests on the 10th of August alone, but the real figure is certainly much higher. The overspill from Minsk prisons is transported by police truck to Zhodino almost 60km away.

“Life is hard now” continues the elderly Belarusian, “when you speak they make things difficult”

We stand on the road, beside some flats, tentatively looking up towards the crossing at the metro station. An aura of carnage emanates from the focal point of the earlier demonstration. A suspense-filled susurrus pervades the menacing quiet of the early morning. Flash grenades continue to punctuate the uneasy tranquility, explosions echoing sporadically down the almost deserted prospect.

As we stand, a Spetsnaz soldier walks towards us inconspicuously under the row of trees that line the roadside. He has covered the 200m of more less open ground with the nonchalance of a shark in open water, swimming idly and stealthily towards its prey. None of the idiot aggression of the riot police here, but studied, tempered intent.

«Руки вверх! Стой бля! ты не убежишь!» he shouts — “Hands up! Stop motherfucker! Don’t try and run!”

We put our hands up, start to walk and feign casual, slightly confused disinterest. Anyone who has ever seen a shoplifter caught in the act will know exactly the expression: the fake, insouciant surprise, the widened eyes, the brief unnatural pause as they collect themselves to pretend that the shop assistant must be speaking to the only other person in the aisle (precisely nobody). I have the luxury that I am with around 5 other people and can at least pretend that he is speaking to one of them.

The illusion is rapidly shattered. “Stop you little motherfucker! I’m speaking to you!”

Adrenaline floods into the veins, the vision thickens to a dark focus, time contorts. Foreigners are not immune to the nightmarish overtures of Lukashenka’s goons.

Out of nowhere, a car trundles along the deserted road. How it managed to get between the army roadblock at one end of the prospect and the Spetsnaz unit at the other is unclear.

The shark’s attention is diverted. Aiming his gun at the car, he and his colleague (there are 2 of them now) scream for it to stop.

For the Belarusians such violence is to become the norm. Their capital is in the hands of violent thugs, the regime shoring up its power with brute force. Young and old are swept up in the wave of violent repression; a dull panacea to the myriad ills of Lukashenka’s rule. His crippling stranglehold sees thousands dragged from the street and beaten brutally in unmarked police vans. Europe’s 11th biggest city exists in a state of quasi-occupation, its populace cowering under the weight of potential detention, its central streets controlled by police roadblocks.

In the coming weeks Vladimir Putin declares that the Russian Federation is ready and willing to provide military and law enforcement assistance to the Belarusian government. Russian troops and a “law enforcement reserve” are stationed on the Belarusian border. Lukashenka decries the “meddling” of Western governments and alleges that protests have been coordinated by Lithuania and Poland in a bid to encourage a Maidan-style revolt. This subversion, he insists, is aided by a motley band of agent-activists from the Netherlands, United Kingdom and Czech Republic. On the 16th of August he declares that a 30-nation NATO force has been positioned 15 miles from the border with Poland, and moves the army to the area in response. The external enemy acting as the frenzied justification for his egregious usurpation.

This is the coterie of contradictions to which the dictator demands the people acquiesce. His tottering narrative enforced with the strike of the baton. The rolling military vehicles a sickening compensation for his fallacy of logic. The psychic emesis that he spews onto the population, a placation of his own internal sickness; the hunger for power. There is to be no choice, only the illusion of choice. Lukashenka is the man for the job, but you can never know why. It is not the citizens’ job to know. It is the citizens’ job to accept his monarchic rule, for the good of the nation. Sovereignty coopted into stabilising the teetering psychosis of a single boorish maniac. A schizophrenic status-quo enforced by the venal finality of violence.

Facing the glinting barrel of this finality, we take our chance and run.

А што яны нясуць на худых плячах,

На руках ў крыві, на нагах у лапцях?

– Сваю крыўду.

And what do they carry on their skinny shoulders,

Their blood-marked hands, their legs and feet?

All their grievance!

Fear and Loathing in Hero-City Minsk

I speak to Evgeny, a 27 year old computer programmer about his arrest and detention. He was at a well known shopping centre with some friends and found himself confronted by OMON.

The OMON (or AMAP in Belarusian) are a special, paramilitary branch of law enforcement, formed in the twilight years of the Soviet Union as a form of riot and crowd control. Refashioned after the advent of Belarusian independence, they have been deployed en masse by Lukashenka to crush dissent in the wake of his grand electoral success. They are the waiters at the cocktail party of his dictatorial celebration, wandering around serving up canapes of violence to the unwilling guests. They wear thick body armour and helmets, as well as balaclavas to avoid identification.

“Imagine: you are simple customer of grocery, you bought products, just left a shop and guy begins to run at you… he have baton in his hand. What would you do?”

The answer is clear, and Evgeny and his friends run inside the shopping centre and escape out of a side door. Looking behind him as he exits, Evgeny sees the riot policeman come to a stop. He sees the whites of his eyes, encircled in the thick anonymity of the balaclava.