The cockroach metaphor was first used during Siarhei Tsikhanousky’s election campaign. His motto “stop the cockroach” gained popularity, and the word itself gradually came to have an automatic association with the Belarusian dictator. The metaphor of a cockroach as a mustachioed tyrant goes back to the work of Russian children’s author Kornei Chukovsky, namely his fairy tale poem The Monster Cockroach [Tarakanishche] (1921). In this poem, an insect assumes power over humankind by bullying them, possibly as a reference to the figure of Joseph Stalin (1878–1953). The poem became popular in the Belarusian protests. Some people went out to the street with slippers in their hands to suggest smashing the cockroach. The events of summer 2020 are sometimes referred to as the Slipper Revolution, but the name did not stick.
The picture shows a bird in an absurd situation, that personifys the general situation in the country. The bird tried to catch a bug /cockroach/, that is actually natural for birds, but it was punished.
One of the most popular pictures among Belarussians. The home country pest resting near the pile of mess it has made. One day, when the insects leave the home a lot of damage will remain after them, so Belarusians will have to clean it up…
The Minsk Wheeled Tractor Plant (MZKT) is known as a manufacturer of heavy off-road vehicles. It was formerly a division of MAZ, one of the largest Eastern European automotive manufacturers producing city buses and trucks. In August 2020, MKZT became one of the ten state-run Belarusian factories that joined the strike. On August 17, 2020, during Aliaksandr Lukashenka’s visit to the MAZ plant, the workers famously booed the dictator, and one of them shouted out, “Shoot yourself, officer!” The video went viral. The worker, Andrei Sudas, was later arrested.
In autumn 2020 colleagues from St.Petersburg printed a limited edition of T-shirt with motifs of Belarusian Vyshyvanka series to support repressed and tortured people in Belarus.
Based in the city of Soligorsk in the southern Minsk region, the Belaruskali Factory specializes in the production of potash. On August 17, the Belaruskali strike committee declared an indefinite strike demanding to declare the 2020 presidential elections invalid. The workers' actions led to a partial halt of the work of "Belaruskali", but from August 19 it was resumed. The court in Soligorsk ordered an administrative arrest for a number of representatives of the strike committee of the enterprise.
After the presidential elections held on August 9, 2020, miners Yuri Korzun, Oleg Kudelko and Alexander Kurban refused to rise from the mine to the surface in protest of the policy of the Belarusian authorities. They were forcibly taken to the surface.
The series of people by whose hands the atrocities of the regime are being carried out. Many of Belarusians trusted that by the New Year 2021 the regime would fallen and these people would be justly punished.
Tikhar (slang) - an officer in civilian clothes. Typically detains and beats people without presenting identity documents.
Aleksandr Lukashenko as the main gift.
Natalia Eismont - TV presenter, press secretary of Lukashenko. On October 18-19, 2020, a telephone conversation supposedly between Lukashenko's secretary Natalia Eismont and the head of the hockey federation Dmitry Baskov was published on social media, in which they discussed how they would destroy the protest moods of people, cut off white-red-white ribbons, beat Belarusians and spray "aerosolchyk" into their faces (meaning pepper gas).
Grigory Azarionok is a propagandist and broadcaster of the state TV channel ONT. Creator of the "Order of Judas" program, where he shows the "real" face of the opposition. His speeches usually sound as creepy fairytales.
On November 11, 2020, in the courtyard of the Square of Changes, during the beating of Roman Bondarenko, which led to his death, was seen a man similar to Dmitry Shakuto, Honored Master of Sports of the Republic of Belarus in Thai boxing and kickboxing.
Lydia Yarmoshyna, being the chairman of the Central Election Commission, has repeatedly led the rigging of parliamentary and presidential elections.
In 2001 the Minsk psychiatrist Dmitry Shchigelsky published the Case Report of Alexander Lukashenko.
According to Shchigelsky, today Lukashenko's diagnosis would sound like a Paranoid Personality Disorder.
The image reiterates one of the most popular protest slogans, while Nature itself seems to be in agreement with the protesters. As you might know Alexander Lukashenko claims that he got 80% of the votes of Belarusians. But the reality is the opposite - everybody and everything in Belarus doesn't like him anymore. Even flora and fauna turned away from him! The embroidery depicts a sad figure of Alexandr Lukashenko in between withered trees and birds pooing at him. Other sense of the picture is hidden in a belarussian idiom "Pojekhala Kukukha" [The cuckoo went], that means that somebody is "out of his mind".
OMON - 'Special Purpose Police Detachment' is a Belarusian law enforcement force under the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Belarus (MUS).OMON is part of the MUS's Patrol Service, and is considered to be the republic's riot police. Members of OMON wear balaclavas in order to keep their identity secret and avoid reprisals by the opposition.
GUBOP is the Main Directorate for Combating Organized Crime and Corruption.
On November 20, 2020 Svetlana Tikhanovskaya proposed to recognize this structures as terrorist organizations.
On August 9, 2020, the day of the fraudulent presidential election, thousands of peaceful protesters spontaneously took to the streets all across the Republic of Belarus. The post-election turmoil that ensued included a three-day internet blackout, massive civil unrest, and the military usurpation of power. The regime responded with an unprecedented level of brutality by deploying riot police, militias, and the military, who used rubber bullets and stun grenades on the peaceful protesters and arbitrarily beat and arrested bystanders and drivers passing in the vicinity of the protests. Within two days, two people had been murdered, hundreds were wounded, more than six thousand were incarcerated, and dozens had gone missing. The protesters adopted the “be water” tactics that came out of Hong Kong to wear down the riot police. A similar domestic tactic later developed in the fall and winter of 2020–21, with smaller groups gathering sporadically in the suburban communities. This came to be called the “flickering protests.
Many police officers carrying out criminal orders have soaked their hands in the blood of civilians. Thus, they became bondaged and now it is very difficult for them to get out of it.
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The first three days of the protests were marked by massive arrests and unprecedented levels of state-sponsored violence. The testimonies of those released from jails include accounts of minors and seniors being arrested, overcrowded jail cells, the use of torture, blood-stained floors, and a lack of food, water, and medical aid. Released medical protocols include accounts of rape and organ damage. Testimonies published in the independent Belarusian and Russian media report that certain warders imitated Nazi concentration camp practices by releasing gas into the jail cells and police transportation vehicles, assigning numbers to prisoners, and marking those due for extra-violent beatings with yellow paint and those who had already been tortured with red. The audio recording leaked by BY_POL (initiative organized by former police who are against Lukashenka's regime) in early January 2021 confirms the regime’s plans to create concentration camps for the protesters. Observers have reported one such camp was built near the town of Ivatsevichy in the Brest region. As of the end of 2020, the Viasna Human Rights Center has documented more than 1000 testimonies of torture victims. Their analysis suggests that acts of torture were widespread, systemic, and well organized as a politically motivated punitive operation perpetrated by the authorities to intimidate the Belarusian public. By December 2020, more than 33,000 people had been arrested since the beginning of the protests. According to Viasna Human Rights Organization, as of today there are more then 530 persons are considered political prisoners and remain in jail.
Tikhari (slang) [from the word silence] - representatives of power structures in civilian clothes with video cameras have become an integral part of any opposition action. What kind of people they are, what structures they represent, remains a mystery. Probably, later they use recordings from video cameras to finding and detaining people who took part in the rallies.
“An unknown man in black clothes was standing behind me, filming the speakers and constantly mumbling, as if during a live conference. I made a remark to him, isn’t he filming and streaming directly for Lukashenko? In response, I was hit on the head by the camera [...] This is the man who started a case against me." Uladzimir Yukho, activist of the CCP BPF https://www.moyby.com/news/60378/
After the power structures destroyed large and small independent media throughout the country, and later closed and arrested various charitative organizations, Belarusians began joking: "they will come for everyone who has doors".
On August 9, 2020, during the first night of the protests, Yauhen Zaichkin was hit by a police vehicle known in Belarus as autazak. A video of this incident was broadcast widely, and the media reported that the victim died in the hospital. The next day, news was released that Zaichkin was alive. World media outlets widely reprinted a photograph of a masked riot officer posing with Zaichkin lying on the ground. The identity of this law enforcement officer’s personality was later established by Belarusian developer Andrew Maximov, a resident of Los Angeles. He created a program that matches images of masked policemen with law enforcement databases.
In the picture there is a swastika in a way how it is understood in the "western world", it is simply a link to fascism, the symbol of cruelty. Many people call "fascistic" these brutal actions that the dictator's regime in Belarus made against Belarusians. Also in the picture the stylized riot police officers are transformed into swastika. Because many of them became the executors of those cruel commands. But actually the picture Manure is positive. All these terrible actions already are our national history. In the picture lorries dumping down all bad that happened to Belarusians and it became a manured ground for a new Belarus, that grows as a flower. Take a more open look at the picture. There are sad and tired eyes of the Dzed spirit* crying with swastik-tears. I think it is very necessary to remind these dark parts of national history and not ban it like it has never happened.* Dziady - "grandfathers, eldfathers", sometimes translated as Forefathers' Eve.
Initially, it was planned to hold the Ice Hockey World Championship (IIHF) in two countries - Latvia and Belarus. But after the presidential elections, which ended in mass protests and repressions throughout the country, started appearing the information that the championship would be postponed from Belarus.
Sponsors (Nivea, Skoda, Liqui Moly, etc.) began one after another started refusing to finance the World Cup if it would be held in Minsk. European politicians, functionaries, some hockey players of national teams, heads of federations constantly repeated that it is impossible to play in a country where the regime of Alexander Lukashenko operates and the rights of citizens are violated. The IIHF President Rene Fasel even personally flew to the meeting with Lukashenko, but he also failed to resolve the situation. The influence of all factors turned out to be too high.
The Sports Solidarity Fund of Belarus (BSSF) founded by free athletes (SOS_by) has done a lot on this issue. They created petitions and wrote letters to various sports organizations, provided facts and statistics about events and told in details about the repressions against athletes in Belarus.(for more details about BSSF and SOS_by go to the link)
On 18 January 2021, the IIHF decided to remove Belarus as a co-host due to the rising political unrest and COVID-19 pandemic there.On 2 February, the IIHF voted to confirm Latvia as the sole host for the 2021 IIHF Ice Hockey World Championship.
The cancellation of the championship was one of the strongest blows for the dictator, although he tried to laugh it off that he didn't care. Hockey is Lukashenka's favorite sport. He willingly plays it himself, so in almost every city in Belarus there is a grandiose ice palace, while the grounds for other sports are in poor condition.
The Czech company Škoda refused to sponsor the World Hockey Championship if it takes place in Belarus. After a short time, the government responded by banning the sale of Škoda cars in Belarus. A similar story happened with the famous cosmetic brand Nivea.
