page_title: Flag of Belarus
section_title: White-red-white flag
hierarchical_section_title: Flag of Belarus / Historical flags / White-red-white flag
caption_attribution_description: English: Protest rally against Lukashenko, 16 August. Minsk, Belarus Беларуская: Пратэстны мітынг супраць Лукашэнкі 16 жніўня 2020. Мінск, Беларусь Русский: Протестный митинг против Лукашенко 16 августа 2020 года. Минск, Беларусь
context_page_description: The flag of Belarus is a red-and-green flag with a white-and-red ornament pattern placed at the staff end. The current design was introduced in 2012 by the State Committee for Standardisation of the Republic of Belarus, and is adapted from a design approved in a referendum in May 1995. It is a modification of the 1951 flag used while the country was a republic of the Soviet Union. Changes made to the Soviet-era flag were the removal of symbols of communism and the reversal of the colours of the ornament pattern, from white-on-red to red-on-white. Since the 1995 referendum, several flags used by Belarusian government officials and agencies have been modelled on this national flag.
  This design replaced the historical white-red-white flag used by the Belarusian Democratic Republic in 1918 before Belarus became a Soviet Republic, then by the Belarusian national movement in West Belarus followed by widespread unofficial use during the Nazi occupation of Belarus between 1942 and 1944, and again after it regained its independence in 1991 until the 1995 referendum.
context_section_description: The design of the flag used between 19 September 1991 and 5 June 1995 had originally been devised by the Belarusian Democratic Republic (March to December 1918). The original person behind the design of the flag is believed to have been Klaudzi Duzh-Dusheuski before 1917 and this design is known in Belarusian as the byel-chyrvona-byely s'tsyah (Бел-чырвона-белы сьцяг; literally "white-red-white flag"). Red and white have traditionally been used in state heraldry of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The colours are also based on those of the Pahonia coat of arms that was a traditional coat of arms of Belarusian lands and had a white horseman on a red background. There are several other theories explaining the flag's origin. One theory speaks of an allusion to the name of the country, White Ruthenia.
  In 1918 the Belarusian People's Republic (BNR) was proclaimed, the symbols of which became the coat of arms "Pahonia" and the white-red-white flag. On August 11, the newspaper Svobodnaya Belarus published the first official description of the flag and coat of arms. In 1919-1920, the white-red-white flag was used by Belarusian military formations as part of the armies of Poland and Lithuania. In 1920, the flag was used by participants in the Slutsk uprising.
  Between 1921 and 1939 the white-red-white flag was used by the Belarusian national movement in West Belarus (part of the Second Polish Republic), both by political organisations like the Belarusian Peasants' and Workers' Union or the Belarusian Christian Democracy, and non-political organisations like the Belarusian Schools Society. The flag was also used by the Belarusian Special Battalion in the army of the Republic of Lithuania. After the Soviet invasion of Poland and the annexation of modern-day West Belarus in 1939 the flag was forbidden by the Soviet administration in the newly acquired territories as well.
  In 1941 the flag was used by the Nazi occupation administration, and it appeared on arm patches of Belarusian volunteers in the German Army and Waffen SS (same as the Russian tricolour and blue-yellow Ukrainian flag) and was used by the Belarusian Central Rada, the fascist anti-Soviet government of Belarus in 1943–1944. The creator of the flag Klaudzi Duzh-Dusheuski however refused to cooperate with the Nazi occupation forces and helped a Jewish family to hide in his house. Therefore he was put into the Pravieniškės death camp.
  After the end of World War II the flag was used by Belarusian diaspora in the West and by small groups of anti-Soviet resistance in Belarus itself. In late 1980s the flag was again used as a symbol of national revival and democratic changes in Belarus. By proposal of the Belarusian Popular Front the flag became state symbol of Belarus upon its regaining of independence in 1991.
  After 1995 the white-red-white flag is used as a symbol of the opposition to the regime of Alexander Lukashenko, most notably at the protests after the 2006 and 2010 presidential elections and at mass rallies on Freedom Day celebrations as well as Dziady memorial marches. The flag is not officially banned from public usage, but is treated by the authorities as an unregistered symbol which means that demonstration of it by political activists or sports fans can lead to arrests and confiscation of the flags. In early 2010, the political activist Siarhei Kavalenka was arrested for placing the white-red-white flag atop a Christmas tree on the central square of Vitsebsk. The court gave Kavalenka three years of suspended sentence which was followed by a second arrest and Kavalenka's several weeks long hunger strike. The hunger strike was interrupted by force-feeding on 16 January 2012. The flag has been widely used by opposition supporters during the 2020 Belarusian protests in rallies in support of presidential candidate Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, and later after the scandalous elections, in which, according to the official statement of the CEC, the current president of the country, Alexander Lukashenko, won the majority of votes. A popula
caption: The former flag of Belarus has been used widely during the 2020 Belarusian protests
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