Belarus: President extends 30-year rule despite the criticism

Belarus: President extends 30-year rule despite the criticism

in Belarus are currently taking place in Presidential elections that are under strict control and are expected to be the rule of Alexander Lukaschenko, which has been ruled since 1994 and is therefore the longest in charge of Europe.

Review of the 2020 elections

In the last presidential election in Belarus in 2020, Lukaschenko claimed an overwhelming victory with more than 80 % of the vote. However, the opposition expressed massive allegations of the fraud. href = "https://cnn.com/videos/world/2023/08/belarusian-oplosition-leader-sikhanouskayhanouskaya-cnmax-vpx.cnn"> Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya The rightful winner. This led to massive protests in the capital Minsk, which resulted in the toughest repression in the country's post-Soviet history.

Current elections and the opposition

This year Tsikhanouskaya does not ask the Belarussians to go back to the streets. "The costs are too high," she explains. Since the regime's brutal reaction in 2020, she has lived in exile with her two children. Human rights activists report that more than 1,200 political prisoners, including Tsikhanouskaya's husband Sergei, have been imprisoned in Belarus, with whom she has not had contact for almost two years.

tsikhanouskaya only started in 2020 after her husband was detained and could not run. Perhaps Lukaschko misjudged the political newcomers, because he allowed Tsikhanouskaya to compete against him together with two other women - a mistake that became his greatest challenge in decades of rule.

manipulated elections and missing observers

This time Lukaschenko leaves nothing to chance. He only sees himself towards symbolic challengers, one of them has "Not instead of, but together with the president". For the first time, no independent observers will observe the choice, and the ballot boxes are closed abroad, which means that several citizens Lose their voting rights outside of the country.

Although she does not call up too large -scale demonstrations, Tsikhanouskaya encouraged the Belarussians to express their rejection to the ballots. "We ask those who are forced to participate in this farce against all candidates," she wrote on Telegram.

criticism of the international community

The opposition movement of Tsikhanouskaya describes the "elections" as "a carefully orchestrated farce that aims to keep the illegitimate dictator in power." The European Parliament and the US State Department also classified the elections as "farce".

"Repression arises from weakness, not from strength. The unprecedented measures to silence all opposition to silence show that the Lukaschko regime is afraid of its own people," said the Foreign Ministry last week.

The dependence on Russia

Lukaschko, a 70-year-old former Kolchoselleiter, survived the 2020 crisis partly thanks to his long-term alliance with the Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose support for the Belarusian regime has become necessary for survival. After employees of state media in Putin Kremlin Propagandists sent solidarity with the opposition to replace them. Since then, the dependency on Minsk from Moscow has only deepened.

But Moscow demands its price for the support. Russia used Belarus as a springboard for his large -scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and Lukaschko has been able to do Russia since then, tactical nuclear waffen on Belarusian soil. In December, Lukaschenko said that he was also on the reception of Russia's

growing repression and political prisoners

The lawyer Pavel Sapelka von Viasna reported that many of the detainees suffer from conditions and treatment that are "torture". Lukaschenko will be 74 years old if he fulfills his seventh term, but there are no signs that he intends to withdraw. "As long as I'm healthy, I will stay with you," he explained when visiting a church Near Minsk at the beginning of this month.

In the last week