The ongoing protests in Belarus since Sunday leave much to be desired; that is, if you’re expecting a colored revolution immediately. Sunday saw well over 10,000 people rallying in October Square, about half that on Monday, and slightly more on Tuesday. You really can’t help but be down on it — the chances are slim to none. The mainstream media especially is hedging its bets against the protestors based on the dwindling numbers.
Due to ongoing news coverage, I haven’t really been able to get my thoughts down completely. Here they are. Though there may not be a revolution, here is why you should have hope.
The reason there are only a few hundred people left on the square is because those are the most fearless, most adamant demonstrators who have vowed to hold the square. Milinkevich has announced that Saturday, March 25, will be the day when everyone will return to the square. No matter what the immediate result, it will not be a finale, but the beginning of Lukashenko’s end. While the press is pessimistic on the numbers, it doesn’t go into the reasons why this is so. I’m not sure if these writers assume that Belarus is a country where people can freely organize or what, but there are many strategic factors impeding the protest.
Lukashenko has taken up a strategy rather different than that of Ukraine’s Kuchma — where the crowds were actually allowed to gather — or Uzbekistan’s Karimov — where the crowd was massacred. Instead of breaking up the protestors, he is simply blockading them. Riot police were sent to all surrounding neighborhoods to prevent anyone from joining the protest or bring the current demonstrators food. Likewise, if anyone left the protest, they’d be arrested immediately and not allowed to return. Police were also stationed at the train terminals, searching anyone who might have a tent or other materials that would help the opposition. That’s why the protest never grew to more than 7000 at time — nobody was allowed to join!
However, something can be said about the number of people trying to join. All of the people on October Square has friends and relatives trying to bring them food and warm things. Cars driving by honked in solidarity with them (the police are now fining people for this). Though the television is completely owned by the state and constantly broadcasted pro-Lukashenko propaganda, radio, internet, telephone, and word of mouth got out news about the demonstration and opposers to Lukashenko’s rule slowly began to stream in from the outlaying regions. But they were stopped.
The real number of protestors are much greater than those who have physically been able to make it to the square. Due to the tactics that Lukashenko employs, and his overwhelming control of most media, he is able to make it appear to most people that the opposition rally is so “pathetic” that he isn’t even going to bother to clear them off the square.
Oppositionists have learned from the police tactics as well, however. Instead of trying to dodge police to get to the square in order to deliver supplies, they simply fly past it in their cars and throw them out the window. Others blend into the crowd so that they aren’t caught. The amount of chatter itself that has been able to circumvent Lukashenko’s censors has generated a movement behind the scenes of October Square itself.
The reason for the break is so the vast majority of supporters can go home, rest up, and organize more people. Whether or not March 25 will be successful is highly dependent on how far the police will go to prevent people from reaching the square. I highly doubt Lukashenko will massacre them — he is so highly backed by Russia, that the international outcry could not help but reach Putin’s doorstep. However, they will pull out all the stops. Trains will be cancelled, checkpoints will be set up, and stragglers will be secretly arrested. It is very important that they leave so that they can get the word out and organize more people, but the police will do everything they can to prevent them from returning so that they can pronounce the revolution a failure.
In the end, there is a very hopeful lesson to be learned from all of this. In just one year, Belarus has changed profoundly despite the actions of the regime. The rally on March 25 of last year was only able to bring out 300-400 people before the police beat and arrested dozens of them, including women. Protests then were short-lived phenomena. Because the protestors have been allowed to gather at all, the veil of fear has been lifted. People are actively organizing against the regime and taking moral fortitude in doing so. They are also making connections — friends — with one another for the future. Never before had anyone known who was on their side. Now they know that, in the very least, there are tens of thousands of people that they saw and met who stand with them.
read the whole thing.
UPDATE: BREAKING: TENT CITY STORMED
MINSK, Belarus - Police stormed the opposition tent camp in the Belarusian capital Minsk early Friday morning, detaining scores of demonstrators who had spent a fourth night in a central square to protest President Alexander Lukashenko’s victory in a disputed election.
The arrests came after a half dozen large police buses and 75 helmeted riot police with clubs pulled up to Oktyabrskaya Square in central Minsk about 3 a.m.
The police stood around for a few minutes and then barged into the tent camp filled with protesters.
An Associated Press reporter on the scene said they wrestled about 40 to 50 of the demonstrators, who were resisting, into buses. The rest of the approximately 200 demonstrators were taken into custody without apparent resistance.
By the end of the 10-15 minute operation, all of the protesters had been taken away. All that remained were their tents, kicked down amid the detentions, their gear and garbage.
Police had been detaining opposition supporters and would-be protesters away from the square, but Friday’s arrests marked the first time they had tried to forcefully eject the demonstrators en masse.
Their action followed opposition leader Alexander Milinkevich’s warning Thursday that increased persecution would only strengthen protests against the authoritarian government.
More here:
Today at 3.30 a.m. hundreds of riot policemen and policemen have attacked tent camp on October Square in Minsk. At 3 a.m. 10 police buses and patrol wagons for prisoners encircled the square. Policemen cordoned off the whole square. All reporter were drawn out of the cordons. Then several hundreds of people who were in the tent camp this bight were arrested. All of them where taken to the police buses and trucks, and taken to unknown location. Now only destroyed tents stay on the square. The life of the tent camp was trampled on by boots of policemen and police: national flags, posters, streamers, warm things, dishes. Everything is loaded to cars by street sweepers. Information has been received from people from police trucks that some special means were employed against them. People complain that some gas was used inside one of the white trucks.
[…]
As the Charter`97 press center was informed by Tatsyana Snitko, who was detained by police together with tent camp dwellers, people in buses were beaten up. As she told, many young men have smashed faces, and policemen used foul language and threatened. During the detention policemen ordered: everybody on the floor, faces down!
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