Bela Rusija

Thierry Breton, even said Belarus isn’t part of Europe.

Belarus detains around 20 journalists preparing to cover protest - Reuters witness

Group of Journalists Covering Protests Taken to Minsk Police 'for Identification'

Several journalists apprehended in Minsk, including TASS press photographer Bobylev

27 AUG, 15:40

Putin: Mass protests in Belarus must be taken into account

The Russian president pointed out that his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko expressed readiness to look into adoption of a new Constitution, which may provide for new parliamentary and presidential elections

MINSK, August 27. /TASS/. Belarusian authorities must take the ongoing street protests into account, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in his interview for Rossiya-24 TV Channel Wednesday.

"We believe that all participants of this process [the crisis in Belarus] will have enough common sense to find a way out calmly, without extremities," Putin said. "Of course, if people have taken to the streets, one must take it into account, listen to them, react."

The Russian president pointed out that his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko expressed readiness to look into adoption of a new Constitution, which may provide for new parliamentary and presidential elections.

"The Belarusian president, he did say that he is ready to look into an option to hold a constitutional reform, to adopt a new Constitution, to hold new elections, […] based on this new Constitution, but one cannot go beyond the boundaries of the existing Constitution," Putin said. "Have you noticed that the Belarusian Constitutional Court ruled that creation of some super-constitutional bodies, not provided for by the basic law, seeking to seize power, is totally unacceptable? And this is hard to disagree with."

Earlier, Lukashenko proposed to amend the Constitution in a bid to redistribute the authority of different levels of power and to relegate a portion of powers "down." He also proposed to write down obligatory military service as a prerequisite for a presidential candidate. According to Lukashenko, the new Constitution must be adopted via a referendum. New elections are only possible after a new Constitution is adopted, he said.

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At least 40 journalists have been detained today in #Minsk. Some of them are still at a police station,because they refused to show the photographs they took - @tutby,@Belsat_TV,@dw_russian,@RFERL and others. World Press Photo-winner photographer Paul Hansen will be deported pic.twitter.com/RPqYrBQq2x

— Hanna Liubakova (@HannaLiubakova) August 27, 2020

This is a first for me. Had to write the script for my #BBCNews10 report on a cafe receipt while being detained at a Minsk police station. pic.twitter.com/LSWLLFg81P

— Steve Rosenberg (@BBCSteveR) August 27, 2020

Aug 27: FC Maladzechna players dressed in T-shirts with portrait of deceased Mikita #Kryutsou who was native of #Maladzechna big fan of home club. He was found dead amid post-election protests. His story: https://t.co/1M3SNjma1n #Belarus #BelarusProtest https://t.co/wvxzldevqT

— Belsat in English (@Belsat_Eng) August 27, 2020

Things are different in #Belarus tonight. Riot police detain over a hundred protesters in Minsk hours after Putin says Russia could send in security forces if protests try to violently remove Lukashenko.

They haven’t detained so many in almost 3 weeks. pic.twitter.com/h9jucE9buj

— Patrick Reevell (@Reevellp) August 27, 2020

Vasa wrote:Zasto bas sutra?

Lukashenko hints he is to block (or limit?) goods transit from Poland and Lithuania to Russia/China through Belarus and stop using Lithuanian seaports, as retaliation for sanctions against his government. https://t.co/QfHAUrMzPb

— Sergey Utkin (@usv1980) August 28, 2020

2020 Presidential Election. Preliminary report on election observation. Full text

Observation of the presidential election is carried out by the Belarusian Helsinki Committee and the Human Rights Center “Viasna” in the framework of the campaign “Human Rights Defenders for Free Elections”.

...out of 25 candidates from opposition parties, only two were included in the TECs, and out of 545 candidates nominated by opposition parties, only 6 people were included in the PECs (1.1%). Representatives of opposition parties in the TECs accounted for 0.1% of their members, and in the PECs - 0.009%, which is five times less than in the 2015 presidential election.

On #Belarus, mass protests and repeated internet outages – my article for @Gizmodo #BelarusProtest https://t.co/iKArYFTh94

— Aliide (@Aliide_N) August 26, 2020

The government of Belarus shut down access to much of the internet during a crucial election this month by using equipment manufactured by a U.S. company to block people's access to thousands of websites, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Sandvine Inc. makes what's known as “deep packet inspection” equipment, used to monitor and filter network traffic. It was obtained by Belarus’s National Traffic Exchange Center, which manages the country’s internet networks, as part of a $2.5 million contract with the Russian technology supplier Jet Infosystems, which supplied the Sandvine equipment, according to government documents and the people.

In soliciting bids for new technology in 2018, the government said it needed help with “countering violations” associated with internet activity. But the real potency of the technology it obtained didn’t become clear until about two weeks ago, when large parts of the internet inside Belarus went dark during one of the most consequential elections in nearly 30 years.

As voters went to the polls on Aug. 9 to pass judgment on the country’s authoritarian leader, President Alexander Lukashenko, social media websites like Twitter and Facebook suddenly became inaccessible, and news sources from outside the country were blocked. Protesters soon found ways around the blockage, using their own anti-censorship technology.
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Large swaths of the internet were inaccessible inside Belarus for at least three days. People inside the country lost access to thousands of websites, including Google, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and American and British news websites such as CNN.com and BBC.co.uk, according to Alp Toker, chief executive officer of the civil society group NetBlocks, which monitors the internet. Cellphone app stores, as well as popular messaging apps, including WhatsApp, Telegram, and Viber, were also affected, he said.

#Lukashevich: Russia is convinced that people of Belarus can overcome current difficulties themselves without external interference. It`s not appropriate to impose on Minsk outside mediation in its dialogue with opposition pic.twitter.com/c0nvdxO8HA

— Russian Mission OSCE (@RF_OSCE) August 28, 2020

Statement
27.08.2020, 17:54

The Coordinating Council considers unacceptable the formation of armed groups on the territory of the Russian Federation or another state for use in Belarus: this is contrary to international law and the consolidated position of Belarusian society.

We regret that at the request of the incumbent president, who should act as the guarantor of the Constitution, the Russian Federation has formed a reserve of law enforcement officers for their use on the territory of Belarus. Previously, the acting president has repeatedly stated that external interference in the affairs of Belarus is unacceptable.

The reason for using the CSTO mechanisms is exclusively armed attack. We see no reason to get the situation inside Belarus out of control. Only peaceful actions, supported by the majority of Belarusians, are held in Belarus.

We welcome and support the position of all foreign partners of Belarus, who note that:

1. What is happening in Belarus is an internal matter of Belarus; any form of external interference is unacceptable.

2. The authorities should hear people and engage in a dialogue with representatives of society.

3. All problems in Belarus should be solved peacefully, there are no extremist elements in Belarus, and this should continue to be the case.

The Coordination Council confirms that problems of internal political crisis should be solved exclusively within the constitutional field, within the framework of the law and by peaceful means without external interference.

The Coordination Council does not aim to gain power, change the constitutional order and foreign policy course, expresses its position and conducts its work within the framework of the law. All accusations of the Coordination Council's use of unconstitutional methods and instruments not stipulated by law are false, which is confirmed by program documents and explanations of the members of the Presidium of the Coordination Council.

Since the Coordination Council has a position of non-interference in the internal affairs of Belarus, we ask any foreign partners to refrain from making statements about representing the interests of Belarusian society, providing assistance to the Coordination Council, etc.

The Coordinating Council will not accept any foreign aid and will not participate directly or indirectly in its distribution. The Coordinating Council will perform only those functions that are stipulated in the Regulation. The purpose of the Coordinating Council is to express the position of the Belarusian society.

Only an internal dialogue can be a solution to a political crisis.

A Belarus death squad has been confirmed responsible for the disappearance of three opposition leaders in 1999, when Alexander Lukashenko started consolidating his hold on power. In an exclusive interview with DW, a witness has spoken out for the first time. Back then, when the three opposition leaders disappeared without a trace, rumors began circulating that they had been assassinated by a death squad.

'Tightening The Screws': Belarus' Lukashenko Shows No Sign Of Bending To Protests

August 28, 20205:10 PM ET

LUCIAN KIM

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko appears to be regaining the upper hand after mass demonstrations against his reelection in an Aug. 9 vote criticized as neither free nor fair by the U.S. and the European Union.

For opposition supporters, a sense of dread is replacing the euphoria of some of the largest protests in Belarus since its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.

"The government is now tightening the screws very tightly, and it's becoming quite dangerous," said Yelena, 44, a volunteer in the campaign office of Viktor Babariko, one of Lukashenko's challengers in the election who was barred from running and jailed on fraud charges.

"This week people continued to go out on the street, despite all the threats and warnings that they would be arrested," said Yelena, who asked that her last name not be used because she faces persecution as an opposition activist.

"It's become scary because they can go after you simply for things like the color of your clothes," she said. "It's like George Orwell's 1984. They can punish you for wearing red and white, or a white bracelet, or a T-shirt with a slogan."

Belarus' white-red-white flag has become a symbol of the opposition to Lukashenko, who, after becoming president in 1994, introduced a green and red flag reminiscent of the nation's Soviet-era flag.

Red and white became the colors of Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the opposition candidate who united the three campaigns of her jailed husband Sergei Tikhanovsky, Babariko and Viktor Tsepkalo, a former ambassador to the U.S. who had to flee the country. After the election, Tikhanovskaya too was forced to leave Belarus, and is now based in neighboring Lithuania.

What's left of the organized opposition to Lukashenko is a "coordination council" that wants to facilitate a dialogue with the regime for a peaceful transition of power. Lukashenko refuses to talk to the group, and the authorities have opened a criminal case against it.

On Wednesday, investigators called in Svetlana Alexievich, Belarus' Nobel literature laureate and a council member, for questioning. Earlier two leaders of the council were given 10-day jail sentences for allegedly holding an illegal rally.

"We will not be silenced and forget what happened. We demand all those responsible be investigated and brought to justice, and that law and justice be restored," Maria Kolesnikova, one of the council's leaders, said in a video appeal this week.

In the first days of the protests, police arrested almost 7,000 demonstrators. When they were released from prison, many of them spoke of being subjected to indiscriminate beatings and torture.

The protests and strikes that followed rattled the Lukashenko regime, says Artyom Shraibman, a political analyst in Minsk, but now the demonstrations in the capital are not as widespread and visible as before.

It's still too early to say that Lukashenko has won, Shraibman says, because protesters could turn out in force if the crackdown is too harsh.

"Until the protests have subsided completely, we cannot say they're over because they're basically like fire," Shraibman said. "In theory, the authorities are capable of putting some more gasoline on the fire."

The opposition council, he said, has limited room for maneuver.

"Probably the best thing that they can do is resist all of Lukashenko's efforts to drag them into framing the conflict as geopolitical," Shraibman said.

On Friday, Lukashenko visited a cheese factory in the city of Orsha, draping a white cape over his suit as he inspected the machinery. It wasn't long before he was warning dairy workers that American F-16 fighter planes were now just a 20-minute flight away from the border — maybe even armed with nuclear weapons, he said.

"They don't need Belarus. Belarus is just a springboard, as usual, to get to Russia," Lukashenko said, referring to Swedish, French and German invasions over the centuries that all led through Belarus.

Lukashenko has been talking up the threat from Belarus' NATO neighbors ever since mass protests broke out after the disputed election, which he claimed to have won in a landslide. Before the vote, Lukashenko had warned that it was enemies based in Russia who were trying to divide Belarus.

A political survivor, Lukashenko has now secured the Kremlin's backing while branding his domestic opponents as pawns of the West. On Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that on Lukashenko's request, Russia had put together a rapid-reaction force that could intervene in Belarus if necessary. That same evening, Lukashenko's riot police detained more than 260 people at a peaceful rally in Minsk, including 50 journalists.

But Putin's support for Lukashenko has alienated many Belarusians, who generally have warm feelings toward Russia.

"We expected something else. We always assumed that Putin and Russia would support the Belarusian people and not one particular individual, especially when they see how hard it is for Belarusians right now," said opposition activist Yelena.

She said she hopes the weather is good this weekend so people turn out for renewed protests across the country.

Belarusian authorities have decided to expel all the Western journalists. Reuters, BBC, AP, Agence France-Presse, Radio Free Europe, Deutsche Welle, ARD, RFi. This morning their correspondents and photographers have been stripped of accreditation and have to leave the country

— Tadeusz Giczan (@TadeuszGiczan) August 29, 2020