A year into the Belarusian revolution, the mass movement against the country’s dictator Alexander Lukashenko has all but subsided.
Lukashenko, who has ruled the country for 27 years, claimed he had won the August 9, 2020 presidential election with an implausible 80-percent of the vote. In response, as many as 200,000 people flooded the streets of Minsk on a single day alone, with the resistance sweeping across the country’s cities, towns, and villages. The regime responded with tortures, killings, and mass repressions.
Inside the election headquarters of Svetlana Tikhanovskaya in Minsk, August 9, 2020.
Ultimatums by the opposition frontrunner Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who is seen as the rightful winner of the election, had little effect. Some 35,000 people were detained, with an undisclosed number of dead and thousands tortured and injured, according to a leading Belarusian human rights organisation, Viasna.
In the months following the elections, the scale and boldness of the regime kept growing – from virtually eliminating street-level dissent to scrambling military aircraft to detain a single, key activist, Roman Protasevich.
A graffiti, “Lithuania – Help”, seen in Minsk on August 10, 2020.
According to various NGO estimates, some 100,000 people have left the country of some 9 million people in one year.
Lithuania, a neighbouring state and a member of NATO and the EU, began offering humanitarian visas in September 2020, helping Belarusians flee.
In one year since September 2020, Lithuania has issued Belarusian nationals 22,199 visas, including 6,059 humanitarian visas for those fleeing repressions, and 13,066 residence permits. The country has also received 258 asylum claims, some of which were lodged by people who entered the country irregularly via the forests separating the two countries. Minsk is some 180 kilometres away from Vilnius.
A year later, thousands have found refuge in Lithuania and its capital Vilnius, a mere 30 kilometres from the Belarusian border.
The recent arrivals thought Lithuania would be a temporary escape, but are now facing the new reality of having to rebuild their lives in Vilnius. For hundreds of relocants, the temporary displacement has become permanent.
Many continue the fight in Lithuania, able to do so more openly than across the border in Belarus, where the resistance movement has largely receded into the courtyards, kitchens, and encrypted Telegram groups.
Minsk, Belarus. The mass protests against the regime began as soon as the fraudulent election results were announced on August 9, 2020.
But having escaped the terror at home, many are still processing and dealing with the effects of trauma.
Random sounds, smells, or sights in Vilnius can plunge them to relive the same panic-stricken moments, which stem from unprocessed, emotional memory.
Vilnius Municipality hung the Belarusian historical flag on its building in May 2021 in a show of support to the opposition.
Many cluster in new communities across Lithuania, with their survival experiences building a new, collective identity as August Belarusians.
This is their story – their struggle with survivors’ guilt, the will to fight, and the settling permanence of their rushed escapes.
In protest against what Lithuanian officials said was a “hijacking” of the Ryanair flight, Belarusians launched paper planes into the frontyard of the Belarusian embassy in Vilnius.