Belarus: fourth massive mobilization and great challenges ahead
There is a very tough fight going on. The popular will for change needs new steps to defeat Alexander Lukashenko and the authoritarian regime.
ByRuben Tzanoff
For the fourth consecutive Sunday, tens of thousands of people will take to the streets of Minsk and other cities to demand Lukashenko's departure and the holding of new elections. Previously, the police warned that the number of agents and soldiers in the streets of the capital would increase. The same day of the demonstration there was 633 detainees, some of them in the neighborhoods of the capital. The security forces blocked the accesses to the main central avenues, several subway stations closed, government buildings fenced, monuments and cordoned off the Plaza de la Independencia, in which the concentrations were being held.
The attempt to intimidate the population failed again: massive participation was stronger than the deployment of repressive forces and armored vehicles, the summoned to the"unity march" it was forceful. Like the previous mobilizations, the one done on sunday 6 was preceded by a week of venue actions, in which opposition actors continue to join: this time it was the turn of the students who, with the restart of the school year they held assemblies, actions in universities and roadblocks. It is evident that there is a strong will to get rid of the authoritarian regime.
Enough of repression
The crackdown also continues, what, although it is not massive thanks to the force of the mobilization, continues to be systematic and brutal. It targets political leaders, labor activists, students and people who are committing the"crime" to express their ideas openly. At the time of this writing, the media report on the kidnapping of Maria Kolésnikova, who was director of the campaign for president of Viktor Babariko and is currently a member of the Coordination Council of the mobilizations. According to a witness quoted by the Tut.by portal, a group of masked men intercepted her near the National Museum of Art in Minsk., forced her into a van and took her away.
In addition to the repressive activity of the KGB and the uniformed, there are bands that perform dressed in"Country / Year"or masked, beat up, kidnap, detain and mistreat people who are gathered or who were previously identified. They do it with total impunity, in broad daylight and anywhere, so that it is recorded in the social retina that the reckoning“it can touch anyone”. The repression is also vicious with the labor movement, since the regime is panicking that the organization of the working class can be articulated against it. Official bureaucrats and company directors are the transmission belt for the threats of dismissals, suspensions, disciplinary and criminal sanctions. Some activists are arrested, others are warned with appointments to testify in police stations, as a step prior to arrest. political prisoners“for participating in unauthorized demonstrations” suffer human rights violations.
It is not the last word
There is a very tough fight going on, on the one hand, the people are mobilized, which is organized as it can, overcome fear and claim, tired of 26 years of authoritarian rule, of the social ills it suffers with the state capitalism executed by Lukashenko, with disasters in managing the pandemic, inequalities and poverty. On the other hand, a government is found that retains only minority social support, which is supported by the state apparatus, repressive institutions and Vladimir Putin's lifeline. Lukashenko bets on the combination of repression and wear of the claim over time, but the concrete thing is that it has not yet managed to defeat the protest.
Independent organizations and the Workers' Party
It is impossible to know how long the conflict will last and what its outcome will be.. what is safe, is that the government is severely questioned and for a very broad social sector the rupture has no return. There is an unequivocal way to confront the authoritarians: the widest unit of action in the fight, in this case for Lukashenko to leave, the Stalinist institutional regime and there are free elections.
The rebellions against other authoritarian presidents in different parts of the world have left a double conclusion: that they are not invincible and that defeating them is not an easy task either, since they cling to power by appealing to the most nefarious repressive mechanisms to preserve it. It is true that repression imposes conditions of extreme difficulty, that put at stake the freedom and life of people: but it is also that, as on other occasions in history, the great challenges do not come when there is already a previous preparation to face them with the certainty of victory. In these conditions, Mandatory tasks emerge for revolutionary socialists: support the struggle and help the emergence of a new political alternative.
Regarding the fight, achieving the general strike with mobilization would be decisive in tipping the balance in a positive direction. It would also be the creation of democratic organizations to fight, to coordinate the sectors that demand, useful for organizing mobilizations, the demand for the freedom of prisoners and self-defense. Yes these organisms develop, the working class could play a leading role in them. It is glimpsed from the incursion into the political scene of important detachments of workers from factories, minas, Offices, schools and other work structures, as well as from the role played by organizations such as the Independent Trade Union of Belarus.
Since these tasks are very important, they are not the only ones, there is another urgent task: redirect the rudder towards the formation of a Workers' Party. Do not fall into the traps of the bureaucrats, right, nor in the "Siren sings" of the current political leaders of the process. Although today they promote the fall of Lukashenko, tomorrow they will not hesitate to hand over the country to the banks, international usurers and in trampling on workers' rights in order to guarantee corporate profits, with the liberal recipes of the bourgeoisie and the pro-capitalist petty-bourgeoisie. A party that does not give in to the imperialist ambitions of the European Union, from United States, Russia and China. That it is equipped with a transition program, as a bridge between immediate and strategic demands, to govern the workers and the people, within the framework of a workers' democracy regime with full freedoms and a socialist system, without exploiters or exploited, without oppressors and oppressed, without bureaucratic privileges and with guaranteed social rights for all.
A match with these characteristics today would be essential to organize the fight against Lukashenko, to present workers' candidates if there are new elections and organize the resistance if the regime does not fall immediately, but mainly to dispute the power of bureaucrats and capitalists.
The town has managed to wake up from a long nightmare induced by bureaucracy, in which power recreated the worst chapters of Stalinism. From the International Socialist League we will continue to call on the workers and peoples of the world to support the mobilized Belarusian people, with actions in embassies and consulates, with pronouncements of internal commissions and bodies of delegates, of assemblies and unions, of student centers, of political parties, mainly from the left, of feminist groups and for human rights. Yes the Belarusian people win, all of us who fight for freedom and social rights will win.
