#belarus protests

[aqlstar]

Just described the situation of college campuses in the US to one of my campers who made Aliyah from Belarus.

She goes- oh, sounds like how people treat Jews in Belarus.

I think it would be good if the United States could stop resembling Belarus please.

[goldenstarprincesses]

One thing I never will understand about canon Hetalia is why 99% of the nations are written in a way that clearly is showing that they are not personifications of their government. But that they represent their people/an idea

Yet Belarus is pretty much just a copy paste of the Russian puppet government

[syrenki]

my family was just robbed of two thousands and my grandmother was denied a permanent residence card despite her daughter and grandchildren having lived here for 20 years and despite her being 80, so she can only spend a total of 90 days here in the next 5 years, and we can't visit her because we'll be arrested as soon as we cross the border, all this together meaning she will probably die alone there. and how are the rest of you all doing

[frail-simulacra]

Toy protest in belarus, 2012

"Free the people" "Where is the freedom of the press?" “Toys against lawlessness."

10 days in jail

[thewordenreport]

Protests in Belarus: Moral Power vs. Raw Violence

Protesters in Belarus were beaten and imprisoned just for being at peaceful protests against the rigged election in 2020. Moral power versus raw violence, without the government even advancing an ideology. https://thewordenreportinternationalrelations.blogspot.com/2024/12/gandhi-applied-to-protests-in-belarus.html

[alaturkanews]

Activist says he'll be tortured if Serbia extradites him to Belarus

Andrey Gnyot is wearing a tracking device on his ankle in the ordinary apartment in Belgrade where he is under house arrest. But the Belarusian journalist, activist and advertising director fears a far worse fate hangs over him if his appeal against tax evasion charges fails and he’s extradited back to Belarus. “Anyone who worked during the protests has been detained, arrested and tortured. I…

[head-post]

Polish judge asked for political asylum in Belarus: “This is a protest”

Polish judge Tomasz Schmidt announced his protest to the Polish authorities, who are leading the country to war under the influence of the US and Britain, and fled to Belarus, Belarusian media reported.

Polish citizen Tomasz Szmydt, who was persecuted in his homeland for his independent position, has asked for political asylum in Belarus. He gave a press conference while already being in Minsk.

Szmydt said that he was prompted to take this protest step by the policy of Warsaw, directed under the influence of the US and Britain against Russia and Belarus. He noted that this is leading to Poland’s active involvement in the war. At a press conference on Wednesday, Szmydt said:

If we are talking about the situation in my country, it is an expression of protest against the way the policy towards Belarus and Russia is being conducted. Thanks to the fact that I’m here, I can freely speak out. The situation is such that America wants to drag Poland into a war, into a conflict zone.

In Belarus, Szmydt believes, there is everything for a peaceful and free life. In addition, he is in favour of peace and good-neighbourly relations with Russia and Belarus.

Earlier, Szmydt wrote on his Telegram channel:

Due to disagreement with the policy and actions of the authorities, I was forced to leave my home country and I am currently staying in Belarus. I was persecuted and intimidated for my independent political stance. I am expressing my protest to the Polish authorities who, under the influence of the USA and Great Britain, are leading the country to war. The Polish nation supports peace and good neighbourly relations with Belarus and Russia. That is why I am in Minsk and ready to tell the truth.

Belarusian media have already called the incident an information bomb.

The Polish prosecutor’s office opened a criminal case against Tomasz Szmydt.

Read more HERE

[unhonestlymirror]

I need more Deadpool movies. Or something like it. Without jokes about "mother russia" tho (although that one was fitting into situation)

[niveditaabaidya]

Greta Thunberg Forcibly Removed From Climate Protest After Fine #greta ...

[pseuddamntired]

From the link https://pramen.io/ru/2023/08/anarhisty-na-marshe-v-varshave-v-godovshhinu-protestov-2020-goda/

It seems this text was primarily written in Belarusian and a Russian translation was provided, since the Russian section is labeled with a language code/marker in brackets.

[begin translation]

[RU] 9 августа, участни:цы нашего коллектива, вместе с Беларускими Анархистами Варшавы и другими товарищами присоединилась к блоку анархистов на марше диаспоры по центру польской столицы.

[Russian] On the ninth of august, participants/members of our collective, together with the Belarusian Anarchists of Warsaw and other comrades formed a coalition of anarchists on a march [comprised] of diaspora in/along the center of the Polish capital.

Мы вышли, чтобы проявить солидарность со всеми заключенного режима, а так же с теми, кто остался на свободе, но не потерял протестного запала и полон решимости довести дело до конца.

We went out in order to demonstrate solidarity with all people imprisoned by the regime, and in the same way with those who remained in freedom, but who did not lose any of their passion for protest and full determination to take things through to the end

Такие марши — это не просто ритуал. Они напоминают нам про чувство единства и самоорганизации, которые сыграли огромную роль в беларуских протестах;

Such a march is not simply a ritual. They remind us of the feeling of unity and self-organization, which played a huge role in the Belarusian protests;

; они помогают нам перенести эти ценности в современную борьбу за свободную Беларусь и освобождение каждого заключенного.

; they help us carry across these goals to the current fight for a free Belarus and the release of every prisoner.

Пока все не будут свободны!

Until everyone is free!

[end translation]

I’m not perfectly fluent in Russian and I don’t know any Belarusian. So there were some constructions there that gave me trouble, and I’m not certain if they were the result of not exactly one-to-one translation from Belarusian to Russian or the result of my own incompetence, but I believe I have the correct meaning as it was intended.

Also, comparing with the Belarusian text, I think there were some words left out of the Russian text. Like “Belarusian diaspora” became simply “diaspora”

I’m not trained in translation so I don’t know how to handle cases like that.

This is just to say: I’m not a native speaker of Russian and don’t know how to translate things precisely but non-awkwardly at the same time.

"The anarchist collective @pramenby from Belarus and "Belarusian Anarchists in Warsaw" as well as others in Warsaw, Poland, protested on August 9 in solidarity with those imprisoned by the regime.

Unfortunately no coverage in English that I could find, but there's more pictures and video here...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jyu1aKep54M

https://pramen.io/ru/2023/08/anarhisty-na-marshe-v-varshave-v-godovshhinu-protestov-2020-goda/

https://avtonom.org/news/anarhistki-na-marshe-v-varshave-v-godovshchinu-belarusskih-protestov-2020-goda

...and those are every language. ;-)"

https://todon.eu/@b9AcE/110889122090202986

[meeedeee]

Elaine Scattermoon (@scattermoon) tweeted at 2:12 PM on Sat, Elaine Scattermoon (@scattermoon) tweeted at 2:12 PM on Sat, May 13, 2023:

So, I need to explain Croatia.

The band, Let 3, are a famous Croatian left-wing punk group who have mocked the country's nationalism, supported Prides, and once got arrested for performing naked even though the band protested that they weren't cos they had corks in their butts.

Their song is a *direct* and *very* savage takedown of Putin and his wargames, mocking how he was gifted a tractor by his dictator pet, Belarus' Lukashenko."

https://t.co/aNKETv9K1A

(https://twitter.com/scattermoon/status/1657493986070740995?t=W9Rq-rzoyH5tK3Ni58e41A&s=03

[iamthetruenhaz]

Russia's prep work

I originally wrote this as a reply to a reddit comment about the prep work Putin's Russia has done to reconquer Eastern Europe (and Central Asia) and soften up the West in order to "reclaim" the "lost" global power status the USSR had.

Putin* has been prepping his "reconquering" of Eastern Europe and Central Asia since he stepped into office. He took on an openly anti-western course since the Munich speech in 2007. He probably saw American global dominance weakening following Afghanistan and Iraq and because Russia had stabilised after the 90s, he thought it was time to act.

First he paved the way with the Chechen war where he "won" and got to jump on the War on terror bandwagon and use Islamic terrorism as a boogeyman for his own imperialistic purpose to rile up Russians against external threats.

Then he invaded Georgia to probe the soil and see how the west would react. They mostly ignored him so he went on to meddle in Eastern European politics, coerce Ukraine for gas and fund right-wing parties all across Europe (at the time mostly to drive a wedge between Eastern and Western Europe and suck EE countries back into Russian orbit) while pumping anti-western sentiment and Soviet nostalgia at home.

He saw that the west was disunited because of the US-UK-EU split following the wars in Iraq, Libya and Syria. He capitalized on that in several ways using both the wars and the refugee crisis that followed. One, to increase racist and nationalist propaganda and stir up hatred against "the liberal gay western cabal" and the resulting Euroscepticism. Two, to prop up the "proper" traditionalist Russia as an alternative. Three, to paint Eastern European countries as a puppet of the US liberals who were "ackschually" nazis in disguise, which was easy when the West was divided between trying to coax them into the EU and leaving them as a buffer-zone backwater. The brightest example of the latter was in late 2021 when Lukashenko started dumping Middle Eastern migrants on the Polish border so the Poles could be painted as a racist, white supremacist state. Unlike, you know, Belarus (really Russia) which weaponized the migrants.

Then he failed in Ukraine when his puppet's sharp turn away from a planned EU accession path caused the Euromaidan revolts. Pro-Russian protesters soon spawned, staging provications (my own country had a wave of protests and pro-russian counter-protests back then and I remember neonazis and other paid protesters being at the forefronts). Russian media started hurling accusations of nazism against pro-western protesters.

All of a sudden, it's like a switch was flipped in Russian society. Decommunization was out the window. In 2015, Stalin was chosen as the most influential figure in *world* history by Russians. All the anti-Western, Russian irredentist, traditionalist, racist and homophobic sentiments coalesced into one, directed against the "evil nazi gay jewish West". Putin started openly provoking the West with displays of military force, close flybys in territorial waters, playing Cuban missile crisis in Kaliningrad. All to rack up the atmosphere of an imminent Cold War II and maybe even WWIII where a "wronged", "humiliated" Russia would finally make the West pay. The WWII victory celebrations also took on the appearance of a war cult, with jingoistic slogans like "we can do it again", "to Berlin" and "we're coming for the German women" displayed on every 9th May parade. Eastern European countries, especially the Baltics and Poland, noticed and tried to raise alarm, but were mostly told to keep their paranoia down and ignored.

In the last decade, he used his military and propaganda machine (what we call "hybrid warfare") to create the impression of the following: (1) The West is imperialist (and is being hypocritical about it), waging pointless bloody wars in the Middle East; (2) The West is weak in those wars, causing Russia to step in like in Syria and deal with the issue "properly"; (3) Western democracies are weak in dealing with "barbaric" refugees because they're too greedy not to let them in but too soft to throw the bad apples out (this was used to boost nationalism and Euroscepticism).

By those means, Russian propaganda managed to manipulate both anti-imperialist and nationalist groups within the West as well as in Russia and Eastern Europe and pave the way for its "just war" of "reconquering" Eastern Europe. In the West, the image of Eastern Europe was molded as either "poor backwards savages we're better off without" (for nationalists), "paranoid silly yokels crying wolf about Russia who is now playing nice" (for moderates), "ingrates not worth defending so we'll pull out" (for Trump-like US conservatives) or "backwards homophobic barbarians we don't want here because they'll ruin our utopia" (for progressivists). In Russia, they were portrayed as "lost property", accused them of being "taken over by nazis" anytime they tried to acknowledge any of the repressions suffered from USSR, and "unconscious puppets of the West" and routinely threatened with "annexation in 3 days" whenever they "misbehaved" by taking a stance against Russia's politics, whether past or current. Finally, in Eastern European countries themselves, Russia tried to ruin the image of the liberal West by portraying them as "the real fascists", "liberalism gone so far it circled back to fascism" and to prop up its own image as the "savior from debauchery upholding the good ols ways".

Also worth noting that Putin was all too eager to intervene in any country that tried to reject Russian dominance or even its own pro-Russian dictatorship. He was ready to support Belarus in 2020 and intervened in Kazakhstan in 2022 just a month before the invasion of Ukraine.

So yeah, it was quite the prep work. All to ensure that when he went on his imperialistic crusade in EE, people at home and in the West and even in Eastern Europe itself would applaud him, failing that be indifferent, failing THAT remain unheard.

* by "Putin" I don't necessarily mean just him, but the lobby behind him as well.

[alwida10]

Ugh. I hate getting political, so have some bullet points.

- Putin laments the fact that the Soviet Union has vanished. One of his major goals is to re-establish it. This has been said openly.

- the Soviet Union included regions young people from today know only as autonomous countries, including Armenia, Aserbaidschan, Estland, Georgia, Kasachstan, Kirgisien, Lettland, Litauen, Moldawien, Tadschikistan, Turkmenien/Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Usbekistan, Belarus. (Countries in bold are the countries I remember evidence of Russia has tampered with. Might be more, since my memory sucks.)

- to ensure the comeback of the Soviet Union, Putin (Russia) uses war tactics to destabilize, control and manipulate the countries to make it more likely to re-unite with Russia. Remember how Belarus’s elections have been tampered with and the bloody crushing of the protests? Moldavia has been calling for help regarding the Russian troops in their country. If you haven’t heard about Ukraine, this post isn’t for you.

- if you are able to read Russian, it’s easy to find the war plan Russia has developed to ensure this goal, including the annexation of Ukraine, Moldavia up to attacks on Poland and east-Germany.

- the biggest problem for Russia to reach this goal is the NATO, and that mostly because the USA had the NATO’s back.

- as long as the nato stands together it’s almost impossible for Putin to reach his goal.

- “devide and conquer”

-by now it’s well documented that Russian involvement led to Trump’s victory.

- the same people, who organized Trump’s campaign, later campaigned for the pro-Brexit side.

- Trump (being right wing) wanted the US to leave the NATO. Brexit has weakened the cohesion in the EU.

- the right wing parties have been growing in Europe. Italy and Netherland have already elected right wing parties as their leadership. The right wing party in Germany is most likely the second strongest party in the eu elections right now. (Yes, the modern day Nazis. Yes, Nazis.)

- right wing parties are more likely to say “what do I care about my neighbors getting bombed? I’m caring about MY people.” They support getting big (hence powerful) positions such as the NATO getting divided into smaller, easier to beat fractions. Poland does not stand a chance against Russia on its own. The NATO does.

- both Iran (because of the conflict in the Middle East) and China (because of their intend to annex Taiwan) love and support Putin’s tactic to divide and weaken the NATO. The USA are madly powerful, but not even they are able to take on three nuclear powers at the same time.

——

k, why am I talking about this?

-> if you come across anti-Biden, anti-EU, anti-democrat, pro-segregation posts or opinions you NEED to ask yourself if this might be political manipulation to weaken your country. It had been the young voters who put Trump out of office. It’s the young voters Russia and other manipulative powers have on their radar now. YOU are the target to reach their goals.

-> yes, this includes pro-Palestine messaging if it leads into a “don’t vote for Biden” narrative.

[mariacallous]

It’s not [just] about optimism — it’s a peak of defiance. They understand that there’s nothing to lose anymore. This is the final battle, so either we fight or end up as the next Belarus. So yeah, we don’t really have any other option but to be optimistic. 

Georgian journalist Anna Gvarishvili, head of the Investigative Media Lab at the University of Georgia about the continuing protests against the illegitimate recent elections in Georgia

[gaymer-hag-stan]

Absolutely!

Back in 2022 the EBU was originally gonna allow Russia to participate on the basis that the Eurovision "Is not a political contest" even though it very much is.

Ukraine initially protested this but they, still, didn't budge.

Only after Finland, Estonia and Iceland threatened to withdraw (I think it was these three) and only then did the EBU decide to suspend Russia on the basis that their broadcaster was spreading misinformation and propaganda regarding the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The official statement given was not that they had an issue with one of the contestants actively invading another, rather that they weren't being honest about it.

It's worth noting that each country has to pay a participation fee based on their population. In other words, a country like Poland is not paying the same amount of money as a country like San Marino. You can therefore see why the EBU did not want to lose Russia. If one country with large population leaves that means the participation cost for the remaining ones will rise. In fact, Russia's expulsion has inadvertently caused Bulgaria's, North Macedonia's and Montenegro's withdrawal as they could no longer afford the participation fee. This year, Romania, a country with a large population but facing financial difficulties is possibly also withdrawing. Their participation is still up in the air, well after the period to announce their participation has ended, and Australia also took quite a well to finalize negotiations for their participation.

Just like they did with Russia, the EBU has already announced that they do not intend to ban Israel and unless no other countries complain about it and threaten to withdraw, like Estonia, Finland and Iceland did before for Russia, they're gonna keep Israel around.

I'm not here to discuss who should be allowed in and who not, because if we start with Israel then we should also take Azerbaijan, Serbia and every single northwestern European country that retains colonies around the world out too, but my point is, if the EBU's official reasoning for expelling Belarus was that they were trying to send a propaganda song and for Russia was that their broadcaster was spreading propaganda, I don't see how Israel's broadcaster isn't doing the exact same thing about the ongoing situation in Palestine.

[sailorsally]

Yesterday, May 28 Georgian Parliament overrode the President's veto and finally adopted the foreign influence law.

According to this law, following an anonymous tip, the government is allowed to demand any type of personal information from you - including sexual and health history - and use it against you.

Every organisation getting more than 20% of funding from foreign countries will be considered to be a foreign agent and so will be the people who work within these organisations. This directly threatens legitimate elections this coming October because most NGO's that guarantee fair elections are in fact financed from outside of Georgia by the EU or the USA and will be banned from the election process following this law.

This exactly has been the whole point of passing the law. The Georgian Dream ruling party knows that there is no way they can stay in power legitimately so they are engaging all their resources to falsify the votes and do it illegally.

It's important to me as a Georgian that everyone knows none of the laws Georgian parliament is passing are what people want. There have been 200k+ people protesting this daily since mid April while being beaten up, blackmailed, and incarcerated for their protest.

We need all the support we can get from the international community in this fight against our pro Russian government. The situation is very dire - the existence of Georgia as a country will be decided in coming days/weeks/months.

This exact law was passed in Russia in 2012 and then edited several times since in order to strengthen the regime over the years. It has been used as the main tool to scare and terrorize the few free thinkers in Russia and throw them into jail.

According to the latest addition to the law (just last month) nobody who works in a company that gets 20% or more of its money from outside Russia is allowed to vote in elections.

This law has also been passed in Belarus some years ago and is greatly contributing to banning any anti government/ anti Russia opinions within the county.

I ask everyone who is a friend of Georgia and my friend to please talk to the representatives in your governments and ask them to sanction the members of Georgian parliament and the ruling party, as well as their family members so these traitors who have been stealing our money and storing it in European and American banks, going on long vacations with their families financed by corruption and have been bringing their wives to the US to give birth and get residence card will at least feel some type of discomfort following their decision to insult the Georgian people in the worst possible way and give over our hard fought & won independence to Russia willingly.