When Dmitry Kudelevich made his escape from the Belarusian security services, it was via the bathroom window in a KGB office in Salihorsk. “They dragged me out of my car, hand-cuffed me, put me in a minivan and took me to the KGB office,” he says in a video circulating on Telegram. Kudelevich, a member of the strike committee at the Belaruskali potash plant, continues with a smirk: “I always called on people to fight, and today you could say I had a unique opportunity to test my strengths.”
Over the past week, labour activists connected to strike committees at Belarusian enterprises have faced a pressure campaign - arrests, informal threats, and fines - from law enforcement agencies as mass protests continue in the country. These come in the wake of highly contested presidential elections on 9 August, which are widely seen as fraudulent. Thousands of enraged citizens took to the streets to protest in the days that followed; Belarusian police responded with mass arrests followed by shocking violence and cruel treatment of those they detained.
Workers at state-owned industries have joined the protest movement, staging public meetings, walk-outs, threats of work-to-rule actions, and strikes. Researcher Volodymyr Artiukh points out that there have been reports of protest activity at “at least 70 industrial, trade and service companies as well as in the educational, medical, and media sectors” since the election. “Almost all of these are state-owned enterprises and/or publicly-financed organisations,” he says.
