A country of farmers and workers, this is what the ideal Belarus looks like, according to President Lukashenko. He likes to be filmed, sitting on a tractor or crouching with his hands through the earth to harvest potatoes.
It is not the ideal of many young Belarusians. They grew up with the internet and a smartphone. They prefer to let their hands flutter over a keyboard and they are also very good at that.
Nesting place
In 2005 Lukashenko allowed the creation of the High-Tech Park, a variant of the American Silicon Valley. A breeding ground for IT companies with a lot of young talent.
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Fifteen years later, 50,000 people work in the IT sector and it has become a multi-billion dollar industry. So is the app Flo developed in Belarus. It is the most downloaded health app on the App Store. The app allows women to track their menstrual cycle. It has now been downloaded 137 million times and the app is also popular in the Netherlands. It is an example of the explosive growth of the IT sector in the country.
Departure from Belarus
But since the elections in early August, something has changed and some coders, developers and testers are hoping for something different: a departure from Belarus. Mikalaj Murziankou is the CEO of software company Iomico and kept on LinkedIn a poll. 12 companies indicated that they were leaving completely, in 59 cases some of the staff were moving to another country and more than 100 companies were considering leaving.
Open letter
The creatives do not want to sit in an environment of violence. In an open letter, CEOs, investors and developers call on the violence against protesters to stop. “Start-ups are not born in an atmosphere of fear and violence,” the letter says, which has now been signed more than 2,500 times. “Startups are born in an atmosphere of freedom and openness.”
Of letter writers expect a massive outflow of IT specialists abroad, and fear that the booming industry will be wiped out in a short time. They don’t beat around the bush. They too say openly that the presidential election has been faked.
Lukashenko shuts down the internet
Then something else plays with it. The companies mainly work for the American and European markets. Being able to keep in touch undisturbed and do your work is necessary to survive. This is only possible with a good and stable internet connection. But after the elections, Lukashenko shut down the internet several times. According to NetBlocks.org, the internet was down for 61 hours in the four days following the election.
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According to a Belarusian news site about the tech-industry 168 IT specialists were arrested during the protests and four ended up in hospital.
The booming IT sector was created under his presidency, but the unprecedented crackdown on Lukashenko destroys his greatest success.
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