Journalism of Courage
The uprising in Belarus erupted last week in a democratic vacuum, in a country where challengers to President Alexander Lukashenko are jailed or exiled and where there is no experienced parliamentary opposition. (AP)
When unprecedented crowds of 200,000 people marched through the tidy, broad avenues of Minsk on Sunday, they came to a halt at red traffic lights, waiting obediently until they turned green. (AP)
Authorities in Belarus blocked more than 50 news media websites that were covering weeks of protests demanding that authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko resign but protesters still turned out again Saturday, some forming a chain of solidarity in the capital. (AP)
Police responded harshly to the protests at first, arresting 7,000 people and beating many of them. But the police crackdown only widened the scope of the protests, and now anti-government strikes have been called at some of the country's main factories, former bases of support for Lukashenko. (AP)
Protesters say they are fed up with the country's declining living standards and have been angered at Lukashenko's dismissal of the coronavirus pandemic, as well as his decades of repressing dissent. (AP)
