This first chain of women appeared on Wednesday: a few hundred brave souls, clad in white and adorned with air flowers, in a quiet powerful response to the horrific violence caused by thousands of Belarusians in previous days.
Towards the following afternoon, columns of flower-waving women sat everywhere, parading along the wide avenues of central Minsk smiling, laughing and resolutely demanding political change.
“We are here to show solidarity with all our men who were beaten and abused,” said Tatyana, a 31-year-old waitress who was at the very front of a column of about 1,000 women who holding flowers – one of many such groups walking through the center of Minsk. She and her friend were holding a white flag, which she said was a sign of her longing for no more violence.
On Friday night, thousands of Protestants descended on the Belarusian parliament, potentially setting the stage for a new show-down with insurgent police. As the demand for change intensifies and even reaches the factories that are the pride of Alexander Lukashenko’s neo-Soviet economy, the authoritarian ruler ends this week in power in conflict with an ever-broader coalition of opponents. But from the beginning, this has been a rise inspired and led by women.
After several male presidential candidates were arrested or fled in the run-up to the vote, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the wife of one of them, stepped in. Together with two other women, the trio offers a simple program that inspires many Belarusians: swift new elections that would be free and fair.
Lukashenko, misreading the mood of the country he has left for 26 years, laughed at Tikhanovskaya, suggesting that they should concentrate on eating for their children. The attacks only made people more to admire Tikhanovskaya.
“The three of us were able to show that we have taken responsibility for what happens and for the future of Belarus,” Maria Kolesnikova, the only female trio to remain in Belarus, said in an interview. in Central Minsk this week. “The West will not help, Russia will not help, we can only help ourselves. Our female faces became a signal to all women – and also to men – that every person should take responsibility. ‘
No one knows the real result of Sunday’s election, but it seems likely that Lukashenko won everything close to a majority, and certainly not the required 80%, a wildly impulsive number that inflated the protest vote and brought thousands to the streets.
Authorities responded to the protest with some of the most violent police violence in modern European history. On Sunday and Monday afternoons, policemen marched through Minsk as they played a computer game, looking for anyone wearing protest ribbons, anyone watching and many random bystanders.
Those who were caught were subjected to brutal violence, and no one was immune. Not the 47-year-old man who was on his way home to his wife was randomly arrested and later given an extended ritual slap by a gang of police while he was forced to lie face down on the floor. Not the 51-year-old journalist in the city of Grodno, who shouted “journalist” and waved his accreditation in the air, only to hit in the face and lose four teeth (and then hold on and fine) . Not the man who was taken prisoner on video because he was dragged by riot police, and wrote in disbelief: “I fucking voted for Lukashenko!” And not about 6,700 others, stuck these four nights this week.
The epicenter was reported below the Ukrainian capital, Minsk, on the outskirts of Minsk: two impressive buildings, one white and one terracotta, behind high walls and covered with barbed wire.
In scenes that may have come from the pages of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, crying relatives waited outside, desperate for information about the whereabouts of missing children, siblings. A long line snuck back from a gray metal door that had a small hatch that would open briefly every few hours. If it did, those who were waiting could give the names of their missing and wait for one yest as in nyet to bark away from them from an invisible person.
During the day, snipers patrolled the rooftops, and appeared to be communicating with thinly clad plain-clad spectators stationed among the crowd of weary relatives. At night, frightening cries of pain could be heard from behind the walls. Sometimes ambulances arrived to remove those whose injuries had become critical due to beatings. Judges arrived in minibuses to conduct trials directly in jail, with many detainees saying they were forced to sign papers with fabricated information about where, when and how they were detained.
By Wednesday morning, it appeared the protest was decisively crushed. The re-establishment of the internet, rudely shut down across the country just after the vote, seemed to be a sign that the authorities felt they were back in control of the situation. The image painted by opposition on social media channels of a country on the brink of a successful revolution seems just as detached from reality as the nightly spots about targets for grain harvesting and rapeseed oil prices on Lukashenko’s state television.
But when prisoners began to be released, thousands of graphic videos of their injuries and testimony were shared with disgust on messaging apps. The mood changed again as the country began to appreciate the scale and braziness of the abuse.
Marina, a 28-year-old musician who took part in the initial demonstration of women on Wednesday, said she was not interested in politics prior to this year, just living her own life in parallel with the repressive state and not feelings limited by it. However, she was provoked by Tikhanovskaya’s campaign and hated Lukashenko’s strong reaction.
‘Well, when I see his face, I can not even explain the feeling. “It’s worse than hate, it’s black in me that I did not even know it was there,” she said.
When shock turned to catharsis, Minsk looked like a carnival on Thursday and Friday, as large groups of women marched through the streets, and cars that sat with their horns as support provided a constant background of noise. The policemen withdrew and the authorities launched a late strategy of half-hearted reconciliation.
Tikhanovskaya may now be out of the country, but her video class on Friday protesting over the weekend, combined with growing resolution among the protesters and the growing number of striking factories, suggests that the coming days will be crucial.
There was a total lack of demonstrations of support for the dictator, with none of the flag-raising youth groups as angry grandmothers that presidents in Russia and Ukraine have gathered in recent years in an attempt to show the depth of their support as protest movements inflame. Lukashenko appears to be in little control, except for the police and army.
Kolesnikova, who has remained in Minsk despite a series of threats and the arrest of many colleagues, dismissed the conversation about things becoming violent. ‘I do not think there should be a revolution, and the only person who uses words like revolution is the current president. We have always only talked about peaceful methods of protest, “she said on Wednesday.
But events in Minsk are moving fast, with crowds massaging on Friday night, set to be the biggest demonstration to date, and uncertainty about how riot police will react. A new demonstration plan for Sunday could be the largest in the country’s history. No one really believes in the prospect of dialogue with the dictator, let alone a bloody collapse or the sudden fall of the regime as the most likely outcome.
At Pushkinskaya, a crossroads of two wide avenues on the outskirts of the city where a protest was killed on Monday night, people who had never dreamed of attending a protest all week gained their respect. The blood-red blood floor can still be seen on the sidewalk.
‘I’m scared. Of course I’m scared. But I have a son, and I do not want him to live in this kind of country, ”said the 54-year-old Marina, who began to cry as she spoke. As she broke down in tears, a young man stepped past a row of protesters on a scooter.
“Thank you, beautiful women of Belarus!” he roared, donating flowers to each of them as he passed.
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