The opposition to Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko's attempt to railroad his re-election in August escalated dramatically in the last 24 hours as spontaneous clapping and honking protests expanded across the country. The authorities arrested more opposition leaders and international journalists, and another opposition candidate, already in jail, attempted to kill himself by cutting his wrists.

Tensions are rising rapidly as the authorities clamp down as Lukashenko’s control of the situation appears to be slipping. The outpouring of frustrations was triggered by the arrest of ex-banker and leading opposition candidate Viktor Babariko on June 18. By the end of the same day protestors started forming human chains along streets in cities throughout the country. Cars driving by honked their support of some of the most widespread protests that the Lukashenko regime has seen since his election in 1994.

“People lining the streets in cities across the country were shouting "Release! Release!” and “Freedom! Freedom!” They demand freedom for Viktar Babaryka. He and his son (co-ordinator of father’s presidential campaign) kept in KGB custody now,” tweeted Tadeusz Giczan, an academic who covers Belarus, referring to the leading opposition leader who was jailed last week.

 

The authorities' reaction has been to increase the arrests and to attempt to lock cities down. The main thoroughfare in Minsk was closed by police and prominent international journalists reporting on the protests were taken by plainclothes police and bundled into vans.

“Police has just closed the main Minsk thoroughfare, spontaneous lines pop up everywhere across the city centre. The noise is unbelievable, even bus drivers are beeping in support! On the 1st pic is the KGB HQ where Babariko is being held, he can definitely hear the support,” Giczan tweeted

“Outraged by Babariko's arrest thousands of Belarusians came out on the streets in Minsk. Ppl are standing in a 3km long queue, which gets longer every minute. Part of the queue is now standing outside KGB HQ where Babariko is being kept, literally every car is beeping in support,” added Giczan.

While details remain sketchy, several hundred protestors seem to have been arrested and scuffles broke out as police tried to remove other protestors.

Belarus watchers speculate that the arrests will only have a limited impact on the opposition vote against Lukashenko in August as the protest vote will go en masse to any candidate that manages to get on to the roster.

“I think they'll call their supporters to vote for whoever gets registered (Babariko, Tsepkalo, Tikhanovskaya). All three kinda support each other, there's no competition between them,” Giczan said.

Babariko’s lawyers have been unable to see their client since he disappeared on June 18. His formal arrest has not been confirmed by the authorities, but neighbours reported that police had entered and were searching his house. Other reports claim that he has been moved from the holding cells at the KGB headquarters in central Minsk to a secure KGB detention centre, according to reports on the local Telegram channel.

At the same time, Babariko's lawyers finished filing a full package of documents with the Central Election Commission (CEC) to complete the process of registering a presidential candidate. Babariko has collected an unprecedented 400,000 signatures to support his candidature for president – four times the legally required minimum of 100,000.

All transactions to and from Babariko's electoral fund have been blocked by the authorities. His team says they will continue the campaign no matter what.

“Today, on June 17, 2020, when trying to make payments from the election fund, Belarusbank JSB said that the account of Viktor Babariko, in which the election fund is located, was blocked — account expenditures were arrested. Documents confirming the arrest or the existence of other grounds for limiting the use of the funds of the election fund were not provided,” Babariko’s campaign staff said on his website.

“At the same time, the seizure of the funds of the election fund will not affect the current activities of the headquarters. Volunteers, members of initiative groups who do not receive any remuneration [for] work at the headquarters and at pickets to collect signatures. All collected signatures will be duly verified and submitted to the relevant election commissions,” the statement concluded.

The wave of street protests was sparked following the arrest of ex-banker Viktor Babariko, who is seen here with his son Eduard, who is also under pressure from the authories

Security forces threaten to take Tsikhanovskaya's children

Svetlana, the wife of Sergei Tsikhanovski, who was arrested earlier last week, also received a visit from the security services, who she says threatened to take her children away, reports local news site tut.by.

“I was told something like this: “Please note, maybe you stop your trip because you can be imprisoned and the children taken”,” Tsikhanovskaya told Tut.by in an interview. She appears to have withdrawn from the race as a result.

“I have to make a choice between my children and to keep fighting,” Tsikhanovskaya said in a tearful video posted on Tut.by site. “The choice is obvious and I ask you to understand what decision I will take. I want to reassure you that if Sergei was free he would ask you to not give up.”

Other reports say that Tsikhanovskaya will continue her campaign: “It's the only way I can help my husband,” she said, according to unconfirmed reports on social media.

Her husband has been actively campaigning against Lukashenko and has used his popular YouTube channel to organise street protests, which the Lukashenko regime finds particularly worrying. As a Russian passport holder he was barred from running in the August presidential elections so his wife, a Belarusian national, is running in his stead.

Other supporters of Tsikhanovski have received similar visits. Inspectors visited Vitalia Naumik, whose husband was arrested at Tikhanovski's rally in May. They accused her of speaking to the press and also said they would take her child away, according to reports on social media.

More charges were pressed against Tsikhanovski on June 19, this time for “obstructing the work of the election commission”. The head of the commission, Lidia Yermoshina, accused Tsikhanovski of "using the election to challenge [the president's] power," according to a report on the website of the Belarusian daily Komsomolskaya Pravda that has since been removed.

A third prominent presidential candidate Valery Tsepkalo, who is a former Belarusian ambassador to the US, the former head of the highly successful High Tech Park and a Lukashenko advisor on technology until 2017, was also out on the streets on June 19. Videos posted on social media show him shaking hands with protestors on the street late in the evening.

As bne IntelliNews has reported, Tsepkalo is an unusual and confusing candidate, as he is from Lukashenko’s establishment. While the young, dynamic man is popular, his criticism of Lukashenko has been muted. Some have speculated he is a straw man put up by the authorities to distract attention from the true opposition. Others have suggested that Tsepkalo is simply trying to build up a political profile ahead of the succession battle that will follow Lukashenko’s eventual retirement or death. The third possibility is that he is a genuine, but moderate, candidate in the race.

Other candidates

Other less prominent opposition candidates have already been arrested. There have been numerous reports in local media in the last month that those arrested for participation in Belarusian opposition candidates' rallies are being tortured in prisons.

One of the detainees, Pavel Seviarynets, has reportedly cut his veins in protest against this torture.

“Pavel stated that he was in the detention centre in inhumane conditions. He said that he had to open his veins in protest against the torture of him and other politicians who were there,” a friend of the political prisoner Alyaksei Shein said on Facebook, Nasha Niva reported.

Seviarynets is the leader of the Belarusian Christian Democracy movement, an unregistered opposition party. His mother denied the reports. “Pasha scratched his hand. And not even on the side where the wrist is. He is a Christian and cannot open his veins."

Seviarynets was arrested on June 7 while attending a rally organised by Tsikhanovski and was sentenced to 15 days of administrative detention.

And the arrests of lesser-known opposition candidates continue as the authorities ratchet up their clampdown on the movement.

Yuri Gubarebich, the leader of the “For Freedom” movement, was arrested on June 19 and sentenced to 15 days of administrative detention. He was arrested while collecting signatures for his application to stand as a presidential candidate, which is legal.

“The protests had been growing for a few weeks until one day police just [cracked down on them] arresting 1,000s of people for no reason. The same is happening tonight but this time the scale is different. People are protesting in dozens of cities, it's gonna be a real crash test,” Tadeusz said in a tweet.

Pavel Seviarynets is the head of Belarusian Christian Democracy movement and has reportedly tried to take his own life while in detention

The international reaction to the growing crisis in Belarus so far has been muted. However, the EU issued a statement last week warning that if the arrests continued the EU may renew sanctions on Belarus.

The Belarusian foreign ministry called in the leading EU ambassadors for consultations on June 19. According to reports the ministry took the opportunity to explain to the ambassadors that it considers Babariko and Tsikhanovski to be Kremlin agents and the arrests are justified.

To back that claim up, the head of Belarus' State Control Committee Ivan Tertel said that Babariko has been arrested for being in charge of a crime group, trying to influence witnesses and concealing evidence of a crime. The committee has also seized the property of his son Eduard.

Tertel was only appointed two weeks ago after Lukashenko sacked the whole government, nominally as a pre-election change so the voters could see with whom the president is going to work with after the elections. Tertel's previous job was deputy head of the KGB.

Tertel added that Babariko is accused of embezzling $430mn from his former employer, Belgazprombank, which was taken under temporary control of the National Bank of Belarus (NBB) last week.

As bne IntelliNews reported, most of the new government appointments were from the siloviki, or members of the security services. Observers took the change as a sign of Lukashenko’s nervousness over the growing protests and a move to consolidate his hold on power.

The US State Department also issued a brief statement. Relations with Belarus and Washington have improved recently after the US President Donald Trump appointed a new ambassador to Minsk in April after a decade and a half of frozen relations.

“The US supports the right of all Belarusians to participate peacefully in their presidential election without fear of intimidation. Respect for fundamental freedoms and democracy reinforces Belarus' sovereignty and independence, and paves the way for closer ties with the US,” the US State Department said in a statement.

With the opposition movement rapidly building momentum, Lukashenko is getting backed into a corner and the clampdown of the last 48 hours is only pouring oil on the fire.

The problem he faces is that his popularity has fallen dramatically in the last few months. While he has remained genuinely popular for most of his rule thanks to the stability his neo-Soviet system provided, the quality of life has been deteriorating since the 2008 crisis.

Moreover, the Kremlin's gradual withdrawal of its energy subsidies during the last year and Minsk’s decision to largely ignore the impact of the coronacrisis have all undermined Lukashenko’s popularity further.

While there are few reliable polls on this popularity, Belarus watchers speculate that he went into the last elections with an approval rating of over 50% and would have won in the first round even if the results were not fixed to give him a crushing victory. However, going into these elections his popularity is estimated to have fallen to something like 25-35%, which would necessitate a second round of voting if the elections were free and open. That kind of margin is much harder to falsify and typically leads to widespread protests if the authorities attempt it.

This has been the opposition’s strategy. Babariko has told his supporters on multiple occasions: “If you're a clear winner anyway you can order the election commission to get you 80% or more [votes], but if the clear winner is someone else the system might glitch.”