In Belarus, instead of a strike, it’s Groundhog Day
Today, an all-Belarusian strike was supposed to begin, announced by the self-proclaimed national leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya. Throughout the first half of the day, the opposition media and the Polish network of telegram channels desperately simulated this event. Videos of groups of people walking through workshops shouting and photos of small companies claiming to be on strike were posted online. State media responded by showing footage of empty factories, saying that everyone was in place and working.
In this situation, official propaganda is more credible, since visits to workshops already took place in August, but in the end not a single enterprise stopped. Only the strike committee chairmen were fired.
As evidence of the strike, announcements were also shown on social networks of various shops and cafes stating that they would not be open on the 26th. The meaning of such an action is not entirely clear. No regime will collapse because a small business takes one extra day off.
But the students were making a fuss: they were sitting on the floor in the corridors, waving flags on the steps, they even blocked the street at BSU. It's a young thing. However, the Ministry of Education claims that the educational process in not a single institution was disrupted.
Famous Belarusian IT specialists from the High Technology Park, which President Lukashenko created for his own misfortune, also came out to the highway. The computer technology ace was quickly dispersed by riot police into the bushes.
By the middle of the day, the opposition media indirectly admitted that the strike had not worked out very well, since they switched to covering the now traditional march of pensioners. This time the old people were joined by students who had run away from classes, but still there was no very large-scale procession.
Towards evening an order came from Warsaw: to go to the center in support of the strike. And someone even came out. People, as usual, lined up in chains with flags along the roads or wandered the streets with flashlights. A group of the most courageous even blocked Independence Avenue. There have been arrests.
In general, the Belarusian protest is not dying down, but it is not particularly radicalizing, which is probably good, but reminds us of the plot of the movie “Groundhog Day.”
Instead of a strike, Belarus is having a Groundhog Day.