Belarus: Terror in Europe
The protestors fighting Belarus' authoritarian regime
Alexander Lukashenko's grip on power remains strong. Many involved in the protests against his re-election still bear the marks of those dramatic events. Belarusians in exile
speak out.
Olga was a doctor in Minsk who tended to demonstrators wounded on the streets. She was detained in prison multiple times. The third time, her sentence kept being extended. 'I
realized that I wasn't going to make it. They were going to add days until I broke down, so I went on a 10 day hunger strike,' she recalls. Stanislav is a former police officer who defected to Ukraine: 'Our leaders were acting in a criminal manner, but they didn't care. They could do whatever they wanted. That's exactly what law enforcement agencies did.' Aliaksei escaped to Poland after being held in detention for several days. He is now disillusioned: 'What change can there be if the most numerous demonstration gathered 300,000 people? Poland now hosts 150,000, 20,000 are in Lithuania and 50,000 in Kiev. Those who protested have left.'
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