Belarus is being set on fire on both sides
Despite Tikhanovskaya’s ultimatum and the increasingly harsh rhetoric of the Belarusian opposition, the weekend in Minsk passed relatively calmly. Of course, there were thousands of columns of oppositionists walking along one of the avenues, cordons of security forces, arrests, stun grenades and even shooting at protesters with rubber bullets.
But this, unfortunately, has already become commonplace for modern Minsk. Many expected the worst.
This time, the protesters chose Partizansky Avenue for their march, which is located in a working-class area and where there are no important government residences or other strategic objects. The choice seems strange - it's all in the name of the prospectus. Recently, Belarusian oppositionists have increasingly speculated on partisan themes.
They call hackers who break websites of government agencies “cyberpartisans,” and pickets of several people can be called “guerrilla attacks.” If you hang a white-red-white flag on a tree at night, you can already consider yourself a “partisan.” In a republic that was raised for generations on the feat of Belarusian partisans during the Great Patriotic War, this works well, despite the obvious substitution of concepts and the opposite geopolitical orientation of the phenomena themselves.
The opposition is promoting the partisan theme “for growth” in order to provide an emotional and ideological basis for the future radicalization of protests, the likelihood of which, despite the relatively calm weekend, is growing. After all, the partisan movement is not about waving a flag at a rally, but about a dangerous armed struggle.
Unfortunately, the political situation in Belarus is heated not only by radical oppositionists, but also by government officials and some of their supporters, whose statements are sometimes even more extremist than those of the oppositionists.
Last week, two high-ranking representatives of the Belarusian Ministry of Internal Affairs announced the possible use of firearms against protesters. One of them even said that its use would be humane, giving rise to a wave of dark jokes and memes.
Of course, in emergency cases, Belarusian security forces have the right to shoot to kill civilians, but the grounds for this are listed in the law “On Law Enforcement Agencies,” and there were no such situations during the protests in Minsk. It is not difficult to guess how the opposition reacted to such statements.
But, if the statements of the police authorities still have some relation to the rule of law, then some supporters of the authorities are already suggesting outright criminality. Here, for example, is how former KVN member Andrei Mukovozchik proposed to fight the oppositionists blocking traffic on the streets of Minsk: “As soon as these “light and peaceful” people appear at the intersection, the men jump into the car and go there. When they also try to block them, our baseball players jump out together. And with all their father’s stupidity they teach snotty and very brainless youth. Baseball. A club of people's anger. In general, they extinguish everyone. Then they put what they’ve learned on the sidewalk and drive away.”
There are calls for the creation of an organized criminal community for the purpose of beating citizens. The state's monopoly on violence, as we see, is not taken into account.
It would seem that there are not enough extremists in society on both sides, especially during periods of political aggravation. However, the whole problem is that Flour Vozchik is not just a former KVN member, but a journalist for the largest circulation newspaper in Belarus, “SB. Belarus Today" and the winner of the "Golden Pen" award - 2020 of the Belarusian Union of Journalists in the category "Best author's project on the Internet and social networks." An article with such calls was published on the website of the newspaper, which, by the way, is an official organ of the Presidential Administration.
If the “golden pens” of such publications, which could not be more official, do not disdain such things, then what can we expect from simpler figures who are brainwashed by such propaganda 24x7?
Oh, that's what! A certain Maxim Semenyuk, a former employee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, who had clearly read the Flour Carrier, proposed not only to drive the oppositionists around Minsk, but also “at worst, drive them into the Minsk House of Trade Unions,” the building of which he does not mind, and “creatively rework the experience of our southern neighbors.”
By the way, such a desire to follow the example of the Ukrainian neo-Banderaites, who burned dozens of people alive in Odessa, did not cause much rejection among the pro-government part of the Facebook community, and one of the organizers of the supposedly pro-Russian “People’s Patriotic Association “Rodina”, Mikhail Malash, called Semenyuk “ a completely adequate person."
In general, in Belarus now everything is very ambiguous and does not fit into a black and white scheme. The Republic is being set on fire on both sides.
If you find an error, please select a piece of text and press Ctrl + Enter.
Thank you!
Now the editors are aware.