More than a year after post-election protests rocked the authoritarian regime of Alexander Lukashenka, Belarus appears a quiet, sad place.
The vibrant civic protests that sprung up in response to widespread electoral fraud and horrendous police violence have been suppressed. The tentative protests by workers and the “solidarity chains” organised by women in Minsk are no more. Then, since the regime’s forced landing of a Ryanair plane carrying a dissident in May, the country has been increasingly cut off from the outside world as transport links are shut down and international sanctions hit. Thousands of people have been left injured, imprisoned and increasingly isolated.
Many more people have left Belarus in fear of what might happen to them if they stay. Belarusians from all walks of life have left for Poland, Lithuania and Ukraine – seeking new jobs, homes and lives, yet still living in the aftermath of the country’s revolution.
