Belarus opposition girds for a Minsk spring ‘to put a squeeze’ on Lukashenko

VILNIUS — The weather is warming in Belarus, so the country’s opposition plans to turn up the heat against long-time authoritarian leader Alexander Lukashenko and relaunch mass protests starting this Thursday.

“We need to put a squeeze on the regime and finally start the negotiations that we demand,” Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, Lukashenko’s main rival during last August’s presidential election, told POLITICO.

Tikhanovskaya fled to neighboring Lithuania immediately after the August 9 election, where Lukashenko used massive fraud to retain his hold on the country’s presidency; he’s been in power since 1994.

The country was rocked by massive protests demanding Lukashenko’s resignation. He responded with a fierce crackdown. At least four opposition activists have been killed, and hundreds have been beaten and humiliated. Local human right watchdogs have recorded around 850 cases of people facing criminal charges for participating in peaceful protests. More than 30,000 protesters have been fined and held in jail for up to a few weeks.

The courts are imposing draconian sentences on reporters covering the protests.

By late autumn, the protests lost their momentum and over the winter demonstrations were limited to sporadic and sparse street gatherings. Lukashenko has hung on, able to rely on force and on his alliance with Russia to ride out the protests and sanctions imposed against him and top officials by the EU and other countries.

“I am convinced that as true patriots committed to your duty and oath you will do your best to protect the constitutional order, the country and people from any illegal incidents,” he told interior ministry troops last week, according to the state news agency.

He’s dangling the possibility of change — but only in the distant future.

“You will have other people as presidents. I guarantee you this,” Lukashenko said, adding: “I call on you to be patient for now.”

Faced with his refusal to give way, the opposition wants to reignite the protests to show Lukashenko that he hasn’t won.

“People have been thrown into prison every day. [Law enforcers] break into people’s houses, conduct searches, take people away … But people are ready, despite all these things,” Tikhanovskaya said. “The protest mood has not been stifled.”

Change at the top

The goal is to negotiate a peaceful transition of power.

“We should come to negotiations [with Lukashenko] calmly, as it should be in civilized society,” she said.

She compared the current fight against Lukashenko with the game Jenga, where players carefully remove one wooden block after another from a tower trying not to have the whole thing collapse. “Every block could be the last, after which the regime will collapse.”

Despite the frustration in some parts of the opposition at the failure to remove Lukashenko, despite months of non-violent protests, Tikhanovskaya was adamant that there won’t be a change of tactics.

“I understand that people have different moods,” she said. “However, as a woman, as a mother, I don’t want new victims … I still believe in a peaceful solution. And we are appealing all the time — stop beating your own people.”

Another problem for the opposition is the fact that the street protests remain leaderless, as all prominent opposition leaders have been either forced out of the country or are in prison.

For now, Tikhanovskaya plans to continue pushing the cause of the opposition outside of Belarus and excludes a return in the style of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who flew back to Moscow after a poisoning attempt and is now in a prison camp.

“I can go back to Belarus. No doubt that it would be a big move on my part. But right now I don’t think that is on the cards. To put it in a banal way: what can I do from prison? Nothing,” Tikhanovskaya said, adding: “Right now, I can represent the Belarusian people on all the international platforms, meet world leaders, draw maximum attention to Belarus. I will do this for as long as it takes, as long as my country needs me to.”

“But if I see that my return would radically change the situation in Belarus, I will make the necessary decision at the right time,” she said.

Tikhanovskaya, who had no political experience before last summer, stepped into the election campaign in place of her husband Sergei Tikhanovsky, a popular blogger and a vocal critic of Lukashenko, who was jailed in May.

Tikhanovskaya’s initial plan, had she had been able to wrest victory from Lukashenko, was to free all political prisoners including her husband and to announce new, fair and transparent elections.

Future plans

Today, the exiled politician sees her future in a different way.

Tikhanovskaya said she had gained “valuable experience” in advocating human rights and freedoms for Belarus, and that in a post-Lukashenko world she would see no possibility of “dropping what I have already worked out and going back to the humdrum of domestic life”.

“Everything has changed. I am sure that with the experience I have gained, with this knowledge and these skills, I can continue to be of use to Belarus,” she said. “I am truly inspired by the theme of human rights protection, after all the atrocities carried out by the Belarusian government against its own people.”

She added that she is not “attracted to any particular posts” in a new Belarus, but if she were “needed by the people,” she would “be wherever they want me to be.”

Earlier in March, Belarusian state prosecutors brought fresh charges against Tikhanovskaya’s husband, accusing him of plotting mass riots and inciting hatred during the election campaign. He faces up to 15 years in prison if found guilty.

Tikhanovskaya called these accusations “nonsense.”

“All this has no basis. But we see that there is complete lawlessness in Belarus. People get unrealistically long prison sentences. It is clear that all these cases are politically motivated,” she said.

She added that her husband was “having a very difficult time” in prison. “But I know that Sergei is very strong. He knows we will win in the end.”

The couple remain in contact through lawyers.

“He supports me. He asks me not to give up, although I have no plans to in any case,” Tikhanovskaya said. “By bringing all these criminal charges [against him], they force me to act quicker, more resolute, to gather as much support as I can from international institutions.”