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Will Belarus become the next free society?
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| From The Australian RIOT police in Belarus clubbed protesters and arrested an opposition leader who marched in defiance of President Alexander Lukashenko, who has drawn US and EU sanctions. The violence took place after a peaceful rally of up to 7000 people called by opposition leader Alexander Milinkevich. Some of the crowd then attempted to march on a prison where hundreds of opposition supporters have been jailed in the past week since Mr Lukashenko's disputed landslide re-election. Witnesses at the scene on Saturday saw lines of black-helmeted riot police on the road to the prison beating back protesters with truncheons. Alexander Kozulin, one of the two opposition candidates defeated in the March 19 presidential election, was arrested near the site of the violence. Hopefully this is only the start of the movement to remove Lukashenko's authoritarian regime, such as what happened in Ukraine and Georgia. The will of the people overcoming the 'soft authoritarian regime' through sheer weight of numbers and disapproval. That is, if there are enough people interested and willing to put themselves on the line until the movement builds up a critical mass of people large enough so that they can't all be arrested. I say 'soft authoritarian regime' in regards to Belarus because I believe that the Belarusian government is unwilling to use the military to violently enforce its version or vision of law and order, thus differentiating it from a 'hard authoritarian regime' such as China (Tiananmen square, for example) or the old USSR (the Hungarian and Czech uprisings) or the old Iraq for that matter (basically any and every time there was trouble since Saddam took power). In those countries, protests or uprisings against the central authority were (and in many states, still are) put down ruthlessly through the use of military power against the people. I seem to have become the international news man around here, so expect more. I know, lucky you. |
| Posted by Anonymous at 3:48 PM |
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