On August 9, 2020, longtime president of Belarus Aleksandr G. Lukashenko claimed 80 percent of the vote in the country’s latest presidential election. Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, Lukashenko’s main rival in this campaign, was forced to leave the country. This isn’t the first year that Lukashenko’s win at the polls has been suspect, nor is it the first election that has seen both journalists and opposition candidates arrested, or even the first election whose overwhelmingly pro-Lukashenko results have been protested.
However, with both an economic crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic creating added tension in Belarus, the opposition to this month’s election results has reached a new level. Peaceful protests across the country, including the capital city of Minsk, have been met with police violence including tear gas, stun grenades, and both rubber and live bullets. As of this writing, at least one protester has died. The United Nations has condemned the police response to the protests as “a clear violation of international human rights standards.”
Vitali Alekseenok is a Belarusian conductor based in Germany. He is music director of the orchestra of the University of Munich, and is active in organizing the Belarusian resistance in Germany. “But now,” he said, “I wanted to make myself useful in Belarus.” Here are his impressions from the protests.
Vital Cacophony
In Belarus, noise has become the hallmark of resistance.
