Belarus: The People’s Fight Continues
Since August 9, Belarus has been the scene of popular protests against what is perceived to be the fraudulent reelection of President Alexander Lukashenko, who has been in power since 1994. The presidential election results gave him a victory with 80 percent of the votes, a figure far from the counts seen by election observers.
There are thousands of audio and video recordings of electoral fraud, showing the rewriting of results, the substitution of one ballot box for another, and multiple instances of pressure on voters, observers, and election officials. According to journalists and social scientists, based on admittedly partial data, Svetlana Tsikhanovskaya, the opposition candidate, actually won the presidential election. Regardless of the figures put forward, which can vary considerably from one study to another, all observations agree that the totals for the two candidates were much closer than announced by the Belarusian Central Electi