An extraordinary wave of protest has swept Belarus since its presidential election on August 9. The incumbent president, Aleksandr Lukashenko, claimed to have won reelection with a preposterous 80.1 percent of the vote. Protesters rose to demand a fair and transparent vote count: it would be the country’s first in 20 years. In the days that followed, police detained thousands of protesters under horrible conditions that included psychological and physical torture. Hundreds more have been beaten and wounded. And yet Belarusians continue to flood the streets of their cities, demanding that the government acknowledge election fraud and begin a dialogue on transferring power.
The protesters in Belarus are not organizing riots, getting into standoffs with the police, attacking governmental buildings, or looting shops. Rather, they build barricades in the evening, then go back to work in the morning. And yet the riot police confront the demonstrators with tear gas, water cannons, rubber bullets, stun grenades—even, some witnesses claim, live ammunition. After days of documented brutality, the government released thousands of detained protesters the night of August 14.
