Uninhibited repression
The leader recognized that the people who had participated in the major unpublished demonstrations against his power in 2020 had since been excluded from certain jobs, saying that they could request a grace if they recognized “that they were wrong”. “We will not continue everyone, but we are watching them,” he warned, when he has been based for three decades on the all-powerful local KGB. “We have a complete file with all their photos”. On Sunday, only four handpicked candidates by the power served as a storage.
During his sixth term, Alexandre Loukachenko completely suffocated any dissent after the major demonstrations that had followed the presidential election of 2020. Supported by Moscow, he had then succeeded in consolidating his power with arrests, violence and long sentences in prison prison Aiming opponents, journalists, NGO employees and simple demonstrators.
According to the UN, more than 300,000 Belarusians, out of a population of nine million, have fled their country for political reasons, especially in neighboring Poland. In Warsaw, around 1000 people gathered on Sunday around Svetlana Tikhanovskaïa, to denounce the insured re -election of the leader.
The “big brother” Vladimir Putin
Many people wore masks and some refused to testify to AFP, invoking the fact that speaking to the media could attract trouble to their loved ones still present in Belarus. Since 2020, Alexandre Loukachenko has come closer to Vladimir Putin – which he qualified on Sunday as “big brother” -, until his territory is made available to invade Ukraine in 2022. Questioned by AFP on D ‘ Possible regrets in view of the magnitude of the human assessment of the Russian invasion, he replied in a firm tone: “I don’t regret anything”.
-In Minsk, Irina Lebedeva, a 68 -year -old retiree, told AFP to have voted for him. “Thanks to our president, there is peace in the country,” she justifies. Nadejda Goujalovskaïa, 74, also voted for “Batka”, the “father” in Belarusian. But she recognizes lips as the subject is taboo: “Maybe everything is not perfect, that we are not in a democracy …”.
Faced with repression, the Westerners imposed heavy sanctions on Belarus, leading Alexandre Loukachenko to accelerate his rapprochement with the Kremlin. Illustration of this alliance, the Russian army deployed in Belarus in the summer of 2023 tactical nuclear weapons, a threat to kyiv but also for NATO members bordering the country (Lithuania, Latvia, Poland).
Alexandre Loukachenko repeated on Sunday that she wanted to receive Russian ballistic missiles on his soil “Orechnik”. Human rights organizations believe that the country has more than 1,200 political prisoners held in difficult conditions.
