Belarusian Protesters Organize Nationwide Strike

Belarus has been rocked by protests after President Lukashenko’s allegedly fraudulent reelection. (Wikimedia Commons)

After months of unrest, opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya called for a general strike on October 26 to protest Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko’s refusal to step down from power after a heavily contested election. It is difficult to determine exactly how many workers went on strike, but thousands of workers, pensioners, and students have taken to the streets.

The current protests began in August when Lukashenko and Tikhanovskaya both claimed victory in a contested election. Lukashenko has been in power for 26 years and is suspected of fixing the election. Both the EU and the United States have disputed the results, and both levied sanctions against Belarusian officials. 

Tikhanovskaya previously issued “The People’s Ultimatum” to Lukashenko, calling for him to step down before October 25. She warned that she would call for a general strike if he did not respond to the demands. 

Although a teacher by training, Tikhanovskaya announced her candidacy as a replacement for her husband, Sergei, an Belarusian activist blogger who had been arrested. She fled Belarus in early October and has been granted asylum by Lithuania along with the rest of her family. 

Workers in Belarus’s state-owned factories did not walk out on the same scale as they did in August during the early days of the strike. However, there were some smaller walkouts in companies such as Minsk Tractor Works. 

Crowds of protesters have come to support the strikers. At Belarusian State University of Informatics and Radioelectronics, hundreds of people cheered and chanted, “Well done,” in support of teachers who had gone on strike in protest of the expulsion of students who criticized the regime. 

Lukashenko has taken an aggressive stance against the protesters. He replaced his interior minister with Ivan Kubrakov, who formerly served as the Minsk Chief of Police. Kubrakov was responsible for the crackdowns on some of the largest demonstrations. 

The president also appointed three security hawks—Valery Vakulchik, Alexander Barsukov, and Yuri Karayev—to roles as inspectors of disputed regions to handle the ongoing protests. The EU has levied sanctions against Kubrakov and the other men. 

On October 29, Lukashenko ordered the partial closure of the Belarusian borders, excluding the Russian border, citing COVID-19 concerns; only Belarusian cars and trucks will be allowed in and out. 

Over the past two months, protesters have endured being beaten, fined, jailed, pepper-sprayed by the police. The situation further escalated when the security forces lobbed stun grenades into a crowd of protesters and began firing warning shots into the air. In total, more than 16,000 people have been detained in connection with these protests since August. 

Lukashenko has vowed to punish protesters who become violent against the security forces present, stating in a televised meeting, “If someone touches a serviceman… he must leave at least without hands.”

Despite these aggressive statements, the protests have continued in the hopes of removing Lukashenko from power. Many expressed the belief that if they give up, the past two months of unrest will have been for nothing. 

One protester, Oksana Koltovich said, “I get the feeling that we’ve entered some kind of tunnel. There is no way back. We keep going and going and going.”

Russia, an ally of Belarus, has traditionally provided support for Lukashenko and previously threatened to send in troops to help disperse the protests. Notably, Russian President Vladimir Putin supported Lukashenko during the election. However, Konstantin Zatulin, a Russian lawmaker, stated that top-level officials at the Russian Federation believed that Lukashenko would eventually need to step down. 

If Russia withdraws its support for Lukashenko, the combined pressure from Moscow and the EU may be enough to force him out of power.

“We are waiting, waiting, for, maybe, the regime to fall. It depends on the leaders sitting in the Kremlin in Moscow,” said Eduard Sventetsky, a strike leader.