Belarus’s revolution continues on international stage, activists say

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A year ago, tens of thousands of Belarusians surged into the streets of Minsk, calling for the ouster of strongman Alexander Lukashenko. It was an impressive and peaceful display of people power – but fell short of toppling the country’s Soviet-style police state.

The tumult inside Belarus, which began as protests against Mr. Lukashenko’s claim of victory in a presidential election widely seen as fraudulent, has now spilled over onto the international stage. This week has seen the country at the centre of a pair of major scandals. First, sprinter Krystsina Tsimanouskaya took refuge inside the Polish embassy in Tokyo, then fled to Poland to avoid being forcibly flown back to Belarus after she criticized members of her country’s Olympic committee.

That was followed Tuesday by the discovery of the body of Vitaly Shishov, a prominent Belarusian activist who ran an organization that aids exiles fleeing Mr. Lukashenko’s regime, hanged in a forest outside Kyiv. Authorities said they were investigating the possibility that the death was “murder disguised as suicide.”

Mr. Lukashenko had already made himself an international pariah, most spectacularly by ordering the hijacking of a Ryanair plane in May so a dissident journalist and his girlfriend could be taken off the flight and arrested. Meanwhile, the government of neighbouring Lithuania – which has given refuge to Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the woman most people believe won last year’s presidential election – has accused Belarus of inviting thousands of Iraqi migrants to fly to Minsk, then shipping them straight to the Lithuanian border in an apparent attempt to instigate a new refugee crisis in the European Union.

Twelve months after the first protests, the Belarusian opposition says international attention and the support of Western democracies are key to what it calls an ongoing revolution, even as it fears the pandemic and other global crises have diverted attention away from Belarus and its struggle for democracy.

Many of those who challenged Mr. Lukashenko last summer and fall are either in jail or in exile. The human-rights monitoring group Viasna says the regime currently has almost 600 political prisoners behind bars, including the chairman and deputy chairman of Viasna itself.

With the streets of Minsk quieted by repression, the drama has shifted to other world capitals. Moscow has backed Mr. Lukashenko from the outset and continues to provide economic and diplomatic support to the regime in exchange for the deepening integration of the two countries, which some Belarusians worry is a prelude to their country’s absorption into the Russian Federation.

But Mr. Lukashenko’s opponents say they are unbowed. “The resistance continues and evolves,” former Belarusian diplomat Valery Kavaleuski told The Globe and Mail in a telephone interview late last month. As the equivalent of a foreign affairs minister in Ms. Tsikhanouskaya’s government-in-exile, Mr. Kavaleuski concedes that the regime’s willingness to use force has succeeded in frightening many opposition supporters away from protesting. “It has changed from mass rallies on a weekly basis to something more subtle. The priority has become to keep people safe.”

Ms. Tsikhanouskaya and Mr. Kavaleuski have thus focused their efforts on building support for the opposition in Western capitals. Ms. Tsikhanouskaya was received in the White House by President Joe Biden on July 29 and has been treated as a de facto head of state by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other European leaders. Though the recent meetings with Mr. Biden and Mr. Johnson were mostly symbolic, the United States, Britain, the EU and Canada have supported the Belarusian opposition by targeting Mr. Lukashenko and key members of his regime with sanctions.

“Our main message was, in this standoff between democracy and autocracy in the world, Belarus is on the front line of it. Belarusians have been fighting for democracy for almost a year – and we need the support of the U.S. and other countries in this fight,” Mr. Kavaleuski said after attending July meetings with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan.

Canada has been one of the staunchest supporters of the Belarusian opposition over the past year, with Ms. Tsikhanouskaya repeatedly praising former foreign affairs minister François-Philippe Champagne – who travelled to Vilnius to meet with her during the height of the pandemic – for standing by her country. But the relationship has stagnated under Mr. Champagne’s successor, Marc Garneau, and some in the Belarusian delegation were surprised when Canada refused to make an exception to its COVID-19 border regulations to allow Ms. Tsikhanouskaya and her team to visit Canada after their trip to the U.S.

When The Globe visited her office in Vilnius in December, her staff were excitedly talking about combining their trip to the U.S. with a stop in Canada. They hoped that hockey legend Wayne Gretzky – who is of Belarusian descent – might be convinced to make some kind of statement about the political situation in Belarus. (Mr. Gretzky’s grandfather, Anton, immigrated to Canada from what is now Belarus before the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Mr. Gretzky travelled to Minsk in 2010 to open the city’s new arena and even played in a friendly match with the hockey-mad Mr. Lukashenko during the same trip.)

Some in Canada’s Belarusian diaspora worry that Ottawa’s unwillingness to bend its pandemic border rules – which were recently amended to allow baseball players to travel to Toronto for Blue Jays games – signalled fading interest in the Belarusian cause. “If Sviatlana’s visit [was] indeed refused for COVID reasons, that would send the … message that Belarus is no longer on the Canadian agenda. That would be inconsistent with Canada’s position just a few months ago and its aspiration to play a meaningful role on the world stage,” said Natalia Smalyuk, media adviser to the Belarusian Canadian Alliance, which represents some of the estimated 20,000 Canadians of Belarusian descent.

Grantly Franklin, a spokesman for Global Affairs Canada, said there has been no change in “Canada’s support for the democratic movement and the democratic ambitions of the Belarusian people.” He said Mr. Garneau had recently met with Ms. Tsikhanouskaya on the sidelines of a conference about Ukraine last month in Vilnius. “We look forward to welcoming Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya to Canada once travel restrictions permit,” Mr. Franklin said.

Mr. Kavaleuski said he sees Canada as a strong supporter of Belarus and was confident that international pressure would help bring change – in the form of a free and fair election – in the coming year. “It might happen at any moment. It might take longer, but it also might happen sooner. Lukashenko has passed the point of no return. Lukashenko only has Russia as an ally, and he relies only on violence to control the country,” he said. “The people have not given up.”

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