The action was organized by the public organization “Center for Civil Liberties”, the international human rights initiative #BelarusWatch and the project to support political prisoners in Belarus Politzek.me.
“Exactly a year has passed since thousands of Belarusians took to the streets of cities, peacefully protesting against the rigged results of the presidential elections. On that day, they made a choice and decided to fight for the future of the country in which they want to live,” the organizers noted.
Several hundred people marched from the Embassy of the Republic of Belarus to the Independence Square, chanting “Long live Belarus!” The participants of the event honored the memory of the head of the public organization “Belarusian House in Ukraine” Vitaly Shishov, who was found hanged… They also stopped near the monuments to the murdered journalist Pavel Sheremet and Mikhail Zhiznevsky, who died on the Maidan, and honored their memory with a minute of silence.
During the action, leaflets were collected in support of political prisoners in Belarus, in particular, journalist Andrei Aleksandrov.
A film about the repressions in Belarus was shown in the open air. Frames with photographs and names of hundreds of prisoners for the political position of Belarusians were projected onto a building on the Maidan.
A group of nationalists appeared during the march, writes hromadske. Some of them are representatives of the National Corps, but they claim that they are not participating in the action from an organization.
Representatives of the Pramen anarchist group also attended the march. Seeing them, the nationalists said that before the march, it was agreed to use Ukrainian and white-red-white symbols, but not political, and tried to destroy the anarchist banner, on which, in addition to the slogan “Belarus is in chains, and we have the key,” the name was written organizations. There were clashes between the parties, both used pepper spray.
Clashes between anarchists and nationalists took place on the march of solidarity with Belarusians pic.twitter.com/LcpYwJw4Kt
– mass (@HromadskeUA) August 8, 2021
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The representative of the “Belarusian House in Ukraine” Yevgeny Gorodnichuk said that it was “ugly” to resolve the issue in this way, but the parties talked and “understood everything.” Another employee of the BDU, Yuriy Shchuchko, said that he did not regard the clashes as provocations. “The left and the right did not share something again. As always,” he commented.
On August 9, 2020, presidential elections were held in Belarus, after which mass protests began, those who did not agree with the voting results. According to official figures, the victory in them was won by Alexander Lukashenko, who has been in power since 1994, for which 80.1% of voters voted. The second place with 10.1% of the votes was taken by the opposition candidate Svetlana Tikhanovskaya. At the same time, alternative exit polls showed the opposite picture – a confident victory for Tikhanovskaya.
Belarusian security forces violently dispersed rallies using stun grenades, rubber bullets and water cannons… During the protests, hundreds of demonstrators were injured and injured. According to the human rights center “Viasna”, since August in the country detained more than 25 thousand people, in total they received 83 thousand days of arrest. The authorities announced four dead protesters, opposition – about eight.
On September 23, Lukashenko held a secret inauguration ceremony, for the first time in the history of Belarus. not announced and not televised… A number of states, including the USA, Great Britain, Canada, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Denmark, Ukraine and Czech Republic, did not recognize Lukashenka’s inauguration.
In 2021, mass street protests in Belarus stopped, but eThat summer, the situation in Belarus worsened. In early July, the country’s KGB announced a cleanup operation from “radicals”… After that, searches were carried out at a dozen human rights organizations (among them is the center “Vesna”), who helped the victims of the persecution of the authorities for participating in the rallies. Siloviki en masse searched and detained journalists of opposition publications – “Nasha Niva”, blocked back in May by TUT.BY, TAM.BY, “Belsat”, “Radio Svaboda”, Tribuna, “Nasha Gistorya” and others. The Ministry of Justice of Belarus has filed a statement of claim with the Supreme Court on liquidation of the Belarusian Association of Journalists.
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