Every day, like clockwork, to-do lists for those protesting against the authoritarian leader of Belarus appear in the popular Telegram messaging app. They set goals, provide times and locations of meetings with business-like precision, and offer coveted encouragement.
“Today will be another important day in the fight for our freedom. Tectonic shifts are happening on all fronts, so it’s important not to slow down, ”read one of Telegram’s so-called channels on Tuesday. “Morning. Extending the strike … 11am. Supporting the Kupala [theater] … 7 p.m. Gathering at Independence Square. ”
The app has become an indispensable tool in coordinating the unusual mass protests that have rocked Belarus since August 9, when election officials announced that President Alexander Lukashenko – who some call “Europe’s last dictator” – a landslide victory had been won over his 26-year rule in a vote widely seen as rigged.
Peaceful Protestants marching through the streets of the capital, Minsk, and other cities were met with stun grenades, rubber bullets and police beatings. The opposition candidate, schoolteacher Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, went to Lithuania – under pressure, her campaign said – and authorities shut down the internet, leaving Belarus with almost no access to independent online news outlets as social media and Protestants apparently without a leader.
That’s where Telegram – which often remains available despite internet crashes, shows the security of messages in the app and has been used in other protest movements – came in. Some of their channels helped unconnected, distributed rallies matter to well-coordinated action.
The people who run the channels, which once offered political news, now post updates, videos and photos of the riots sent by users, locations of heavy police presence, contacts of human rights activities and calls for new demonstrations – something Belarusian opposition leaders have refused to disclose. Tens of thousands of people across the country have responded to those calls.
In a matter of days, the channels – NEXTA, NEXTA Live and Belarus of the Brain are the most popular – have become the main means of facilitating the protests, said Franak Viacorka, a Belarusian analyst and nonresident guy to the Atlantic Council.
“The fate of the country has never been so much dependent on one [piece] of technology, ”said Viacorka.
In the days after the vote and the subsequent internet outage, the audience of NEXTA Live shot from several hundred thousand followers to more than 2 million. The sister channel NEXTA has more than 700,000 followers. Belarus’s next brain grew from nearly 170,000 users in late June to more than 470,000 this week.
Their influence in a nation of 9.5 million is underestimated, including by the authorities who have noticed them and who are following behind the channels.
Last week, officials opened a criminal probe into NEXTA and its founder, 22-year-old blogger Stepan Putilo, on charges of mass transgression – a crime punishable by up to 15 years in prison. Blogger Igor Losik, who founded Belarus from the Brain, was arrested before the election, but the channel remains operational.
“We have indeed become the bullet of the situation that is currently lacking in Belarus,” Putilo, who is Belarusian but lives in Warsaw, said in a recent interview with Lithuanian news agency Delphi. ‘We have become the voice of this revolution, but not by our own will. It just happened. ”
Putilo first created NEXTA – which is pronounced NEKH-ta and means “one” in Belarus – as a YouTube channel in 2015, when he was just 17 years old. His profile went up last year when his 30-minute video about the country’s iron fisted leader, “Lukashenko. Criminal Records,” was viewed nearly 3 million times. A court in Belarus declared the film extremist, but it is still available on YouTube.
Putilo turned to Telegram in 2018. His two channels focused mostly on Belarusian politics. His team received thousands of messages from users who sent photos, videos and news stories every day and posted the most newsworthy, proudly in often sharing information from sources within the government as legislation.
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After the demonstrations began, thousands of messages turned into hundreds of thousands, and the underground operation now appears to have been overcome. In response to a request from the Associated Press for an interview, NEXTA editor-in-chief Roman Protsevich wrote: ‘Sure, it’s possible, but the question is when. … ”He then stopped responding.
Putilo did not respond to a request for comment.
When the protests began, the NEXTA channels were often the first places on the Internet to carry grim photos of police clashing with protesters. This week, they were filled with videos of workers protesting in business premises.
Journalists in Belarus have praised the channels for breaking the news – but remember that traditional media also play an important role.
“Telegram channels helped to investigate the blackout of information, but I must say that it was not just them,” said Andrei Bastunets, head of the Belarussian Assn. of journalists. “The Telegram Channel [run by bloggers] played a mobilizing, organizing role, while more balanced information could be found on Telegram channels of media outlets. ”
Social media platforms have played major roles in previous uprisings, including in the Arab Spring, protests against government in Hong Kong and demonstrations against racial injustice in the United States.
But, since 2016, when Russia was accused of using Facebook and other platforms in an attempt to influence or interfere in the U.S. election, many social media have viewed it in a more dystopian light, Hans Kundnani said , senior research fellow at the London think tank Chatham House.
“What is happening in Belarus right now is a kind of reminder that social media can actually be used in a positive way from a democratic perspective,” Kundnani said.
Protestants in the streets echoed his sentiment.
“Telegram channels and websites that do not belong to our government are today the main source of information, because we can not rely on state media at all,” said Roman Semenov, who follows the NEXTA channels and participated in a rally on Wednesday night. in Central Minsk. “It’s a Telegram revolution.”
