James Shotter Max Seddon
Viktor had just finished helping a fellow protester whose knee had been blown apart by a police-fired flash-bang grenade when the Belarus riot police came for him. Armed with rubber batons, they threw the 24-year-old truck driver from Minsk to the ground, beat him, and dragged him into a police van.
Along with others who had been protesting against a disputed victory in Sunday’s presidential election for strongman Alexander Lukashenko, Viktor says he was then driven to a notorious prison in Minsk, the Belarusian capital. The detainees were forced to pass through a corridor of guards who beat them until they reached a fence, where they were made to stand for 90 minutes. If anyone moved or spoke, guards beat them again.
“Some people had broken limbs, some people had massive bruises,” says Viktor, who asked not to give his surname for fear of reprisals. “They beat us up like we were animals, not people. How is that even possible? People came to protest peacefully and they beat us up as if we were the scum of the earth.” Almost 7,000 protesters have been detained since in demonstrations broke out this week in the Belarusian capital . .
Viktor is one of thousands of Belarusians who have been subjected to state-administered brutality this week, as Mr Lukashenko, dubbed Europe’s last dictator for his relentless repression of his opponents, has scrambled to put down the most serious challenge he has faced in his 26 years in charge of the 9.5m-strong eastern European nation.
For some it has revived memories of 1989 when a series of revolutions in central Europe tore down the Iron Curtain, and triggered a process that swept away authoritarian regimes, and redrew the map of Europe.
“There have been a couple of cases [uprisings] since,” says Nigel Gould-Davies, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, and former British ambassador to Belarus. “Serbia in 2000, the bulldozer revolution that got rid of Milosevic. And Maidan in Ukraine in 2004 and 2014. [What’s happening in Belarus] is potentially the last step in a 30-year process of reordering European politics.” Line chart of Gross domestic product per capita showing Left in the dust Brutal force
In a week of horrific violence, Mr Lukashenko has done his utmost to prevent that reordering being completed. Almost 7,000 people have been detained, hundreds have been injured, and at least two protesters have died.
Security services have used rubber bullets, stun grenades, and water cannons with abandon. Journalists have been targeted. Even people not taking part in protests have been rounded up, beaten, and arrested.
“We asked the police why they were doing it, and they said, ‘an order is an order,’” says Alina Buskina, a 20-year-old journalism student who was beaten, arrested, strip-searched, and then left in a room with no food or toilet paper for 24 hours, after running into riot police on her way home from a party. “They’re just like dogs who will do whatever they are told,” Ms Buskina adds.
According to Ms Buskina, the women were forced to drink unfiltered tap water and beg guards for food, then told to sign forced confessions that they had participated in “mass disturbances”. When one of Ms Buskina’s cellmates refused, she says a policeman threatened to rape her. “They said, ‘We’ll teach you bitches who to vote for,’” Ms Buskina adds. Women on their periods were told to wipe themselves with their shirts.
Eventually, the guards released them, beating them on the way out for good measure. “I’ve read books about war and genocide and I didn’t believe it could really happen. But when you’ve been there, you see the people who do it, you realise that they do exist, they’ve been so brainwashed by our government that they’re ready to do anything to defend it,” Ms Buskina says.
Yet despite the crackdown, the protests have continued, and not just in the capital Minsk but also in small towns, once Mr Lukashenko’s heartland. On Thursday, and again on Friday, workers at multiple state-run companies began to strike, in an unprecedented display of defiance and the clearest sign yet that the protests extend well beyond the tech-savvy middle-class which long ago tired of Mr Lukashenko.
“This is the biggest challenge Lukashenko has ever faced,” says Joerg Forbrig, director for central and eastern Europe at the German Marshall Fund of the US, a think-tank. “It’s obvious that any strategy that he has employed so far, before the elections, and after the elections, has failed . . . now he is fast running out of options.” Dependence on Russia
Mr Lukashenko’s unpopularity has deep roots. Having won Belarus’s first and last competitive elections in 1994, the former collective farm boss built a command economy, propped up with Russian subsidies. The model offered Belarusians full employment, rising wages, and economic stability, but at the price of an increasingly authoritarian political system.
In the past decade, however, this authoritarian social contract has begun to unravel as Russia withdrew subsidies, wages stagnated, and workers were forced into precarious contracts.
“The long-term threat to this regime is basically the unsustainable economy,” says Katia Glod, a non-resident fellow at the Centre for European Policy Analysis, a think-tank. “The whole model, the lack of market reforms, the dependence on Russia, none of this gives any hope that the economy will improve.” Employees of a Minsk tractor plant attend a rally to express their solidarity with recent rallies © Sergei Gapon/AFP
there are two ways things can develop. Either the people will win. Or Europe will have its own North Korea.”