Study: Remote learning adds pressure for teachers who work second shift as mothers

To relieve stress on teacher-mothers, researchers suggest improved parental leave policies, higher teacher pay and more equal distribution of household labor

UNIVERSITY AT BUFFALO

Research News

 

BUFFALO, N.Y - The transition to remote learning coupled with an unequal distribution of second-shift responsibilities has placed teachers who are also mothers under immense stress, according to new University at Buffalo research.

The study explored the experiences and challenges facing teacher-mothers who perform the roles of educator in the classroom and parent at home, while also typically carrying out more household labor than their partners.

These responsibilities are exacerbated by technology that blurs the line between work and home, inadequate parental leave policies and low teacher pay, says study co-author Julie Gorlewski, PhD, chair of the Department of Learning and Instruction in the UB Graduate School of Education.

"Balancing a teaching career and motherhood seems to be becoming more difficult," Gorlewski says. "Both roles carry an expectation of selfless nurturing and can result in physical and emotional exhaustion.

"The implications of this work are particularly relevant today, where the roles of motherhood and teacher are intensified by the shift to online learning as a result of the pandemic. Through a greater understanding of the lived experiences of teacher-mothers, this study can inform policy and practice to better support an integral segment of the education workforce."

The research was published in late October in Educational Studies.

Additional investigators include Mary A. Hermann, PhD, JD, first author and associate professor at Virginia Commonwealth University; Robyn Walsh, PhD, assistant professor at Capital University; Lindsay Kozachuk, PhD, assistant professor at Palm Beach Atlantic University; UB Graduate School of Education doctoral candidate Elizabeth Ciminelli; and Virginia Commonwealth University School of Education doctoral candidates Dana Brookover and Michael Deitz.

Fatigue from rising expectations

The researchers surveyed 12 teacher-mothers across the nation working in elementary, middle and high school settings. During the interviews, several themes emerged around work-life balance, problematic cultural norms and financial difficulties.

The participants shared the benefits of both roles, including how being a mother allowed them to better relate to the parents of their students, and how their work as a teacher provided them with greater awareness of their children's development. However, they also experienced frequent exhaustion from perpetual caregiving, says Gorlewski.

Technology and the transition to remote learning have raised expectations for teachers, who are expected to maintain contact with parents throughout the day and with their students at all hours. These demands build on the additional work teachers perform after school hours on grading and lesson planning.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, parents became responsible for homeschooling their children after many schools shuttered. For teachers who have children, this responsibility in the household often fell on them as the parent better trained to provide instruction, says Gorlewski.

Societal norms compound these pressures for mothers, who face elevated expectations at home, says Gorlewski. The research found that teacher-mothers reported performing more second-shift activities (household labor such as cooking, cleaning and child care) than their partners. Even when partners contributed more equally toward household labor, mothers typically engaged in significantly more mental labor planning and managing tasks, she says.

Homemaking standards are also magnified by portrayals of the perfect home on social media, and women are more likely to face judgement if their households do not match these heightened expectations, says Gorlewski.

Opportunity in a time of crisis

The researchers advocate for numerous policy changes to reduce the challenges faced by teacher-mothers, including improved parental leave and teacher pay.

Most participants reported that they had to use sick and personal days to earn pay while they were on maternity leave, leaving them with little to no time off after their child's birth to attend follow-up doctor's appointments. Teachers in their early career are particularly disadvantaged, says Gorlewski, as they have less accrued time off.

Due to the small amount of paid maternity leave and pressure to breastfeed from doctors, nurses and friends, some teacher-mothers reported having to pump at work between classes or while preparing the next day's lesson.

In addition to the second shift, many teacher-mothers also work a second job. One in every six teachers work a second job, and teachers are three times more likely than other professions to have multiple jobs, says Gorlewski.

The researchers encourage schools to enact mentoring programs for new mothers as well, as many participants appreciated being able to ask colleagues for advice on parenting and managing multiple roles.

The pandemic presents the opportunity for the nation to rethink the norms in education and family systems, and for teacher-mothers to renegotiate policies in the classroom and expectations in the household, says Gorlewski.

She calls on partners to take equal responsibility for second-shift labor, and suggests teacher-mothers abandon perfectionistic standards of child care and household maintenance on social media in favor of portrayals that show the messiness of authentic parenthood.

"This unanticipated and challenging global event has the potential to reveal some of the invisible work of mothers and educators," says Gorlewski. "Advocates can use these results to promote better norms and policies to support teachers and all working mothers."

Future research will compare the experiences of teacher-mothers with teacher-fathers and teachers who are not parents.

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Clinicians who prescribe unnecessary antibiotics fuel future antibiotic use

HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL

Research News




 

Receiving an initial antibiotic prescription for a viral acute respiratory infection--the type of infection that doesn't respond to antibiotics--increases the likelihood that a patient or their spouse will seek care for future such infections and will receive subsequent antibiotic prescriptions, according to the findings of a study from Harvard Medical School and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

The analysis, published online August 10 in Clinical Infectious Diseases, is believed to be the first to measure how variation in clinicians' antibiotic-prescribing patterns impacts patients' care-seeking behavior and antibiotic use in the long term.

The findings are alarming because they suggest that once such prescriptions are given improperly for a viral infection they could become a gateway to more antibiotic use, the researchers said. Overuse of antibiotics is common. Previous studies have shown that nearly a quarter of antibiotics prescribed in an outpatient setting are given inappropriately for a diagnosis that does not warrant antibiotic treatment.

"The choices physicians make about prescribing antibiotics can have long-term effects on when individual patients choose to obtain care," said lead study author Zhuo Shi, an HMS student in the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology program. "A physician who prescribes an antibiotic inappropriately needs to understand that it's not just one little prescription of a harmless antibiotic but a potential gateway to a much bigger problem."

The researchers used encounter data from a national insurer to analyze more than 200,000 initial visits for acute respiratory infections (ARIs) at 736 urgent care centers across the United States. At those centers, the researchers found that antibiotic prescribing rates for ARIs varied greatly among clinicians. In the highest quartile of prescribers, 80 percent of clinicians prescribed antibiotics for viral respiratory infections, and in the lowest, 42 percent did. To understand the impact of greater antibiotic prescribing, the researchers exploited the fact that patients do not choose their urgent care clinician. They are essentially randomly assigned to a clinician.

In the year after an initial ARI visit, patients seen by clinicians in the highest-prescribing group received 14.6 percent more antibiotics for ARI--an additional three antibiotic prescriptions filled per 100 patients--compared with patients seen by the lowest-antibiotic-prescribing clinicians. The increase in patient ARI antibiotic prescriptions was largely driven by an increased number of ARI visits, an increase of 5.6 ARI visits per 100 patients, rather than a higher antibiotic prescribing rate during those subsequent ARI visits, the analysis showed.

It's not that they were more likely to get antibiotics on repeat visits, the researchers found, simply that each return visit provided another opportunity to receive antibiotics.

Why? In the case of a viral illness, patients wrongly attribute improvement in symptoms to the antibiotics. Naturally, next time they have similar symptoms they believe they need more antibiotics, the researchers said.

"You'll hear lots of people say, 'Every winter I need antibiotics for bronchitis,'" said study senior author Ateev Mehrotra, an associate professor of health care policy in the Blavatnik Institute at Harvard Medical School and a hospitalist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. "The antibiotics don't actually help, but patients tend to perceive a benefit. The fancy term for this psychological phenomenon is 'illusionary correlation.'"

"They get antibiotics and they feel better, not because the antibiotics have worked but because the infection has run its course," Mehrotra said. "The next time they become ill with similar symptoms they go back to the doctor to get another prescription."

And the lesson isn't just learned by the patients themselves. Their spouses showed similar increases in visits and use of antibiotics for ARIs.

The inappropriate use of antibiotics is a serious problem, the researchers said, noting that the practice increases spending unnecessarily, exposes patients to the risk of side effects for no medical reason and helps to drive the rise of antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria.

Using encounter data from a national insurer, the researchers categorized clinicians within each urgent care center based on their ARI antibiotic prescribing rate. The fact that urgent care patients are randomly assigned to a clinician ruled out the possibility that patients might be choosing a physician they knew would likely give them antibiotics for their viral infection, enabling the researchers to examine the impact of physician behavior on future patient behavior. The researchers examined the association between the clinician's antibiotic prescribing rate and the patients' rates of ARI antibiotic receipt as well as their spouses' rate of antibiotic receipt in the subsequent year. Several members of the research team first applied this method to examine pattens of opioid prescribing.

While there is plenty of anecdotal evidence that some physicians say they give antibiotics to patients who request them to improve patient satisfaction, the researchers wanted to see whether and how physician prescribing behavior might be fueling the effect. They set out to answer the question: Could an initial prescription from a high-prescribing physician drive future antibiotic-seeking behavior among patients?

It does, the analysis showed, and the study, the researchers said, underscores the ongoing need to educate clinicians and patients on judicious prescribing practices to reduce inappropriate prescribing, as well as the overall overuse of antibiotics and its associate risks.

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Support for this study was provided by the Office of the Director, National Institutes of Health (grant 1DP5OD017897).

The following additional co-authors also contributed to the study: Michael Barnett, Department of Health Policy and Management, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and Department of Medicine, HMS and Brigham and Women's Hospital; Anupam Jena, Department of Health Care Policy, HMS; Kristin Ray, Department of Pediatrics, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine; and Kathe Fox, Department of Biomedical Informatics, HMS, and Department of Analytics and Behavior Change, Aetna/CVS Health.

doi.org/10.1093/cid/ciaa1173

 

New study defines life cycle of a destructive plant pathogen 142 years after its discovery

AMERICAN PHYTOPATHOLOGICAL SOCIETY

Research News

 

IMAGE:  "USING CONFOCAL AND ELECTRON MICROSCOPIC IMAGING, WE PROVIDE COMPELLING EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT THE PROPOSED LIFE CYCLE OF P. BRASSICAE, MAKING IT MORE CONVINCING AND ACCEPTABLE TO THE COMMUNITY, " EXPLAINED LIU.... view more 

CREDIT: LIJANG LIU

Found in more than 60 countries, cruciferous clubroot disease is one of the most destructive plant diseases, causing so-called tumors on the roots of Brassicaceae crops and resulting in huge yield losses annually. The causal agent of this disease, Plasmodiophora brassicae, was first discovered by Russian biologist M. S. Woronin in 1878. Despite this early discovery, the life history of the pathogen remains a mystery.

"Although P. brassicae has been identified as the causal agent of cruciferous clubroot disease for 142 years, much earlier than the discovery of most plant pathogens, we were astonished that the full life cycle of this pathogen remained unclear when we started our investigation on this plant disease in 2015," said Lijang Liu, a scientist based at the University of Saskatchewan and the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences. "The limited knowledge of P. brassicae biology greatly hinders the progress of studies on the cruciferous clubroot disease, which drove us to conduct this research."

The life history of the pathogen is very complex, comprising many different life forms. Liu and colleagues clarified the life history of P. brassicae in the root tissues of host Arabidopsis in a recently published article.

"Using confocal and electron microscopic imaging, we provide compelling evidence to support the proposed life cycle of P. brassicae, making it more convincing and acceptable to the community," explained Liu. "Notably, and most surprisingly, we discovered the existence of a sexual life stage of P. brassicae, starting from the fusion of two secondary zoospores within the infected epidermal cells."

Their other major findings include defining the development of zoosporangia and secondary zoospores and the sexual behavior between secondary zoospores in root epidermal cells and elucidating the growth and development of secondary plasmodia in root cortical cells, as well as the resultant physiological disturbances to host cortical cells.

"This research provides a fundamental understanding of the pathogen's biology as well as its cellular interactions with host plants. The knowledge gained from this investigation may further illuminate cellular mechanisms underlying host resistance and susceptibility and offers insights into the management practices against clubroot disease," said Liu. "Our article will help readers understand how such a lower eukaryotic microorganism performs a complex and sophisticated life history, giving a rise to a 'tumor' disease on plant roots."

Their article also highlights microscopic techniques coupled with live microbial fluorescence staining, which can be widely used in studying host-pathogen interactions. For more information, read "Refining the Life Cycle of Plasmodiophora brassicae" published in the October issue of Phytopathology.

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Study finds evidence of neurobiological mechanism for hallucinations and delusions

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY IRVING MEDICAL CENTER

Research News

 

A new study from researchers at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons has found evidence of a potential neurobiological mechanism for hallucinations and delusions that fits within the hierarchical model of psychosis and can explain their clinical presentation.

The study was published in eLife.

Columbia researchers Kenneth Wengler, PhD, a Postdoctoral Research Fellow and Guillermo Horga, MD, PhD, Florence Irving Associate Professor of Psychiatry, investigated the neurobiological mechanisms of two symptoms of schizophrenia: hallucinations and delusions. These two symptoms form the syndrome of psychosis, an immensely disabling psychiatric condition where patients lose their ability for reality testing.

"Typically, patients with more severe hallucinations also have more severe delusions, and these two symptoms respond similarly to antipsychotic medications. But this is not always the case; some patients have very prominent hallucinations but less severe delusions and vice versa," says Wengler. "This suggests that these symptoms may share a common neurobiological mechanism while simultaneously depending on symptom-specific pathways."

Some experts in the field believe that a hierarchical perceptual-inference model can explain the mechanisms behind psychosis. Wengler explains, "In its simplest form, the hierarchical model has two levels to the hierarchy: low and high. The low level makes inferences about basic features of stimuli and the high level makes inferences about their causes. An intuitive example of this is inferring the weather. In this scenario, you must decide if you are going to take an umbrella with you when you leave the house. The stimulus in this scenario is what you see when you look out the window; let's say it's cloudy. The context in this scenario is what you expect the weather to be like on a given day in the city you are in; let's say you are in Seattle. Although it is not currently raining, because it's cloudy and you are in a city where it often rains, you may decide to take an umbrella with you. The hierarchical model of psychosis frames hallucinations as resulting from dysfunction at the lower levels of the hierarchy and delusions as resulting from dysfunction at the higher levels of the hierarchy. Critically, these levels of inference are distinct but interconnected, so a dysfunction at one level would likely propagate upwards or downwards to other levels, therefore explaining why these symptoms tend to co-occur."

To investigate the neurobiological mechanisms of hallucinations and delusions within the framework of the hierarchical model, the researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure intrinsic neural timescales throughout the brain. These neural timescales reflect how long information is integrated in a given brain region. Most importantly, these neural timescales are organized hierarchically, making it a fitting measure to test the hierarchical model of psychosis.

The researchers collected data from 127 patients with schizophrenia from various online databases and determined how an individual's neural timescales related to their hallucination and delusion severities together. They found that neural timescales in the lower levels of the hierarchy tended to be longer in patients with more severe hallucinations, while neural timescales in the higher levels tended to be longer in patients with more severe delusions. These results provide the first direct evidence of a potential neurobiological mechanism for hallucinations and delusions that fits within the hierarchical model of psychosis and can explain their clinical presentation. The common neurobiological mechanism for both symptoms could result in increased neural timescales, but the symptom-specific pathways are the level of the hierarchy at which the neural timescales are increased. "Our findings open the door for the development of treatments to target specific symptoms of psychosis depending on an individual subject's symptom profile, in line with the current push for individualized medicine," says Horga.

The paper is titled "Distinct Hierarchical Alterations of Intrinsic Neural Timescales Account for Different Manifestations of Psychosis."

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Additional authors are Andrew Goldberg (New York State Psychiatric Institute, New York, NY) and George Chahine, MD (Yale University, New Haven, CT).

The study was supported by grants from the

National Institute of Mental Health (R01MH117323 and R01MH114965).

The authors report no financial or other conflicts of interest.

The Columbia University Department of Psychiatry is among the top ranked psychiatry departments in the nation and has contributed greatly to the understanding and treatment of brain disorders. Co-located at the New York State Psychiatric Institute on the NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Irving Medical Center campus in Washington Heights, the department enjoys a rich and productive collaborative relationship with physicians in various disciplines at the Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. Columbia Psychiatry is home to distinguished clinicians and researchers noted for their clinical and research advances in the diagnosis and treatment of depression, suicide, schizophrenia, bipolar and anxiety disorders, eating disorders, substance use disorders, and childhood psychiatric disorders.

Columbia University Irving Medical Center provides international leadership in basic, preclinical, and clinical research; medical and health sciences education; and patient care. The medical center trains future leaders and includes the dedicated work of many physicians, scientists, public health professionals, dentists, and nurses at the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, the Mailman School of Public Health, the College of Dental Medicine, the School of Nursing, the biomedical departments of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and allied research centers and institutions. Columbia University Irving Medical Center is home to the largest medical research enterprise in New York City and State and one of the largest faculty medical practices in the Northeast. For more information, visit cuimc.columbia.edu or columbiadoctors.org.

 ARACHNOPHOBIA TRIGGER

Environmental factors affect the distribution of Iberian spiders

Climate, geography and endemism of Iberian spiders

UNIVERSITY OF BARCELONA

Research News

 

IMAGE: THE STUDY LED BY THE UB AND IBRIO REVEALS HOW ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS AFFECT THE DISTRIBUTION OF BIODIVERSITY OF SPIDERS IN THE PENINSULAR TERRITORY. view more 

CREDIT: JAGOBA MALUMBRES-OLARTE, UNIVERSITY OF THE AZORES (PORTUGAL)

Southern small-leaved oak forests are the habitats with a higher level of spider endemism in the Iberian Peninsula, according to an article published in the journal Biodiversity and Conservation. The study analyses the factors that affect biodiversity patterns of spider communities in the national park network of Spain, and explains the role of the environmental factors in the distribution of the biodiversity of this faunistic group in the peninsular territory.

The study is led by Professor Miquel Arnedo, from the Faculty of Biology and the Biodiversity Research Institute (IRBio) of the University of Barcelona, and it counts on the participation of the experts Luis Carlos Crespo, Marc Domènec and Carles Ribera (UB-IRBio), Jagoba Malumbres-Olarte and Pedro Cardoso, from the University of the Azores (Portugal), and Jordi Moya-Laraño, from the Experimental Station of Arid Zones in Almeria (EEZA-CSIC).

Iberian spiders: how are they distributed throughout the peninsular territory?

There are many doubts on the biology and ecology of Iberian spider communities, a group with a fundamental role in natural ecosystems. There might be more than 1,400 species in the peninsular territory, which has a great climate diversity and natural habitat. In some cases, there are species with a limited distribution -regional or local endemism- and this would explain the observed changes among the communities of different areas.

The new study focuses on the study of spider communities in the national parks of Aigüestortes i Estany de Sant Maurici, Ordesa y Monte Perdido, Picos de Europa, Monfragüe, Cabañeros and Sierra Nevada. In particular, they studied the spider communities -a total of 20,552 specimens from 375 species- in different types of oak trees (Quercus spp), widely distributed around the peninsula, such as those that include the sessile oak (Quercus petraea), the Valencian oak (Quercus faginea) and the Pyrinean oak (Quercus pyrenaica).

"The results reveal that Valencian oak forests (Q. faginea) are those with a higher number of spider species, probably due to the combined effects of the physical structure of the habitat and climate conditions", notes Professor Miquel Arnedo, from the Department of Evolutionary Biology, Ecology and Environmental Sciences.

The study also confirms the previous studies that point to a decrease of species in southern forest ecosystems, which is caused by the reduction of connectivity of ecosystems with the rest of the continent.

"However, we suggest that these changes in the number of species could be the result of complex interactions between the geographical position, habitat and local climate. This would make it possible, for instance, for us to find spider communities in the Cabañeros National Park (Castilla - La Mancha) with a higher number of species than in Picos de Europa (Asturias)", notes Arnedo.

Climate, geography and endemism of Iberian spiders

Another relevant contribution of the study is the identification of a pattern that relates the increase of the level of endemism in the spider communities with the rise of temperatures and decrease of annual precipitation, which are typical from the Mediterranean climate.

"Spider communities in Mediterranean areas seem to be more endemic -when we consider distributions of all species in each community- and have a higher number of exclusively Iberian species", notes the expert Jagoba Malumbres-Olarte, first signatory of the article. Other groups of spiders show a higher level of endemism depending on certain ecological features, according to the authors.

"In this case, we saw that those spiders that spread more frequently through the air using silk, known as ballooning, show a more extensive geographical distribution and therefore, are less endemic. For instance, this would be the case of some species from the Lindyphiidae family".

Spiders, indicators of environmental quality

Despite the ecological value of spiders, these arthropods have been rarely used as bioindicators. This study sheds light in this field of ecology studies, and suggests that the presence and abundance of spider families with high levels of endemism -for instance, Oonopidae, Dysderidae, Zodariidae and Sparassidae families- could be used by researchers as indicators of the singularities and ecological qualities of some natural areas.

"In the studied communities, these families are those with a higher level of endemism. If we consider the difficulty when identifying certain Iberian species and the likelihood to find undescribed species, the option of using spider families -instead of species- could ease the use of spiders as ecological and conservation indicators", authors say.

Improving biodiversity conservation strategies

The lack of many experts able to identify and describe spider species and the great diversity of this group are factors that make it difficult for researchers to study the ecology of Iberian spider communities, and by extension, many others. Expanding the knowledge on the biodiversity of the peninsular spider fauna requires the promotion of monitoring programs and a regular control of temporary changes in the communities.

In this context, the published article in the journal Biodiversity and Conservation brings new information to improve the conservation and management of national parks and protected areas in general. It reveals new data on the number and composition of species in the communities in the national parks, information that enables having a reference for future monitoring plans. Also, it identifies the most relevant groups depending on their endemic levels (that is, those with potentially high values for conservation).

"Our study also states that different habitats within the same area or park could have a differential value regarding conservation and scientific interest, and consequently, they could be an object of several levels of prioritization in conservation actions", conclude the researchers.

Infection by parasites disturbs flight behaviour in shoals of fish

Biologists study social responsiveness in fish

UNIVERSITY OF MÜNSTER

Research News

 

IMAGE: INFECTION BY PARASITES DISTURBS FLIGHT BEHAVIOUR IN SHOALS OF FISH. view more 

CREDIT: WWU/JÖRN SCHARSACK

In order to escape predators, many fish - including insects, fish and birds - have developed strategies for rapidly transmitting information on threats to others of their species. This information is transmitted within a group of hundreds, or even thousands, of individuals in (escape) waves. This collective response is also, in the case of fish, known as shoal behaviour. Special parasites can, however, manipulate such a survival strategy. Researchers at the University of Münster have discovered that infected individual fish disturb the transmission of flight behaviour and, as a result, increase not only their own risk of being eaten, but also that of other - non-infected - members of the group. The results of the study have been published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society.

Background and methodology

In order to study social responsiveness in fish, the researchers used the tapeworm Schistocephalus solidus as a parasite. The three-spined stickleback Gasterosteus aculeatus - an important model in ecological and evolutionary parasitology - was used as an intermediate host. The parasite ensures that the fish is less prone to be scared and more courageous and, as a result, increases its risk-taking behaviour. This poses the threat that the stickleback will very probably fall prey to the final host of the parasite, a fish-eating bird. In aquariums the scientists simulated a bird strike on shoals of sticklebacks. "When the shoal consisted only of healthy - in other words, non-infected - sticklebacks, the escape wave continued quickly through the entire shoal after the bird strike, even though the sticklebacks at the back were only able to see the response of their conspecifics and not the bird strike itself", explains Nicolle Demandt from the Institute of Evolution and Biodiversity at the University of Münster and lead author of the study. "When we placed infected sticklebacks in the middle of the shoal, the escape wave came to a virtual halt and it only got through to the fish at the back to a limited extent."

Although the manipulation of behaviour on the part of parasites is widespread in the animal kingdom, many studies carried out so far have only concentrated on the infected animals themselves and on the manipulation of their behaviour. "Ours is the first experimental study which shows how individuals whose behaviour has been manipulated by parasites can influence the transmission of information and, as a result, collective flight responses - in other words, shoal behaviour," explains Prof. Joachim Kurtz, in whose laboratory the study was carried out. The researchers examined the connection between parasitic infection and flight depth, as well as the time the fish spent in the danger zone before and after the bird strike.

Sticklebacks with a high parasitic infection displayed a tendency to take flight to not such a deep level and they remained in the danger zone for a longer period of time than did sticklebacks with less parasitic infection. "The result indicates that the loss of energy might play a role in the extent to which behaviour is manipulated," explains Dr. Jörn Scharsack, who led the study. "Parasites remove energy from their hosts, which leads for example to a reduction in fat reserves and a higher food requirement. Infected fish should therefore invest less energy in flight response and return more quickly to looking for food."

As sticklebacks are found in very different aquatic systems - e.g. clear lakes, turbid rivers and sea environments - transferring the results of the study to the fishes' natural habitats depends on the local surroundings. In clear waters, the results can indeed be transferred to the natural habitat as the fish use their eyes to react to the signals from other sticklebacks taking flight. In more turbid surroundings, however, the fish can rely more on other senses. For example, by means of their lateral line organs they can feel even the smallest changes in pressure caused by the movements made by their neighbours in the shoal. Other factors influencing the transfer of the laboratory study to a natural environment are the size of the shoal, the number of infected individuals and the extent of their parasitic infection.

Should it be a general phenomenon that infected individuals have an influence on the collective responses of the entire group, this might be of wide-ranging significance for the animal kingdom - even including a possible influence of parasites on human group behaviour, say the researchers.

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Soldiers benefit from psychological health research

Army scientists develop training to mitigate misdirected anger, aggression

U.S. ARMY RESEARCH LABORATORY

Research News

 

ADELPHI, Md. -- Army scientists developed computer-based training to help Soldiers avoid unnecessary social conflict and mitigate anger-related outcomes.

Scientists at the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command's, now referred to as DEVCOM, Army Research Laboratory and the Walter Reed Army Institute for Research, developed a Hostile Bias Modification Training protocol to reduce hostile attribution bias, anger and reactive aggression in ambiguous social conflict situations, which can jeopardize social bonds, relationships with significant others, team culture and performance.

"This was a unique across agency collaborative effort bringing together clinical psychology and cognitive science Army researchers to investigate reactive aggressive behavior," said Army researcher Dr. Sue Kase. "After reading an Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers conference publication on social bias factors associated with information transmission, Capt. Jeffery Osgood of WRAIR contacted the ARL co-authors for assistance."

At the time, in 2018, the laboratory was very fortunate to have the effort and crowdsourcing platform resources available to respond immediately to Osgood's request, Kase said.

This established a scientific alliance between the organizations by translating WRAIR's research needs to fit one of the laboratory's ongoing internal research methodologies--technological advances in large scale online data collection.

"Osgood's team brought clinical psychology expertise to the table while we offered our expertise in large scale crowdsourcing experimentation in cognitive behavior," Kase said. "When a partner agency requests our assistance, it is important to think outside the box because the potential impact could be significant and directly transition to the welfare of the Soldier. As in this case, the research will improve the psychological health of Soldiers both in the field and in post-service."

The study consisted of two crowdsourced experiments investigating if HBMT could reduce overall hostile attribution bias as well as perceived hostility, anger and aggression.

HBMT exposed participants to three types of word fragments: ambiguous, aggressive and non-aggressive. Participants were instructed to only form non-aggressive words and not respond in other cases.

Next, participants reacted to vignettes where in some cases the wrongdoer was clearly hostile while in others it was ambiguous.

Participants returned after several days to complete the second part of the study on real-world situations such as driving and social media behavior.

The results of the study, published in the journal Cognitive Therapy and Research, indicate that HBMT was effective in reducing hostile attribution bias, anger and reactive aggression in ambiguous situations.

"Most importantly, these effects appear to extend beyond the laboratory to real world aggression including aggressive driving and virtual aggression on social media," Kase said. "The effects sustained for the entire duration of the study (up to 96 hours). HBMT appears to be an easily implemented intervention to mitigate anger-related outcomes and its online delivery would enable mobile use in the field."

While the results of the study are very promising, the research team said there is more work to be done moving in to the future.

"Though more research is needed, we believe that HBMT could be effective as both a standalone tool for use at home, in field settings, or in concert with other therapeutic options to help mitigate unwarranted anger and aggression," Osgood said. "We are excited about HBMT's potential to both prevent and treat behavioral health concerns."

Kase said that the research team believes this research will positively impact Soldiers operating in both non-hostile and hostile environments.

"Positive team dynamics and task performance are critical when working in close coordination during challenging critical missions," Kase said. "Unwarranted anger in these types of situations can degrade individual team member cognitive processes and physical performance and potentially lead to violence-related consequences. Results from the study help us understand more about unwarranted aggressive behavior and, more generally, contribute to improving the psychological health of Soldiers, including those who have separated from the service. The knowledge gained is applicable to avoiding unnecessary social conflict and mitigating anger-related outcomes in both operational field settings and civilian populated areas."

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ODR: INVESTIGATION

Leaked police data reveals level of violence against protesters in Belarus

Over the past two months, Belarus has witnessed unprecedented violence against protesters in the aftermath of its presidential election. New data confirms its scale.

Media Zona
3 November 2020

Illustration: Maria Tolstova / Mediazona

“Everyone was on their knees, they kept on cramming people into the bus. And then the violence started. The riot police officer said that we had to get up as fast as we could, grab our things and leave the bus. And they started beating people until they stood up. One of them would hold someone while the other beat them. They were just beating and saying: ‘What did you want, bitch, change?’”

This is how one resident of Minsk describes his arrest on 9 August. Alongside thousands of others, journalist Alyaksei Khudanau had gone out to protest against Belarus’ election results after Alyaksandr Lukashenka had been declared the winner.

Official results awarded Lukashenka 80% of the vote, but a significant number of Belarusians believe that the results were falsified, and that Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the only independent candidate, is the real winner of the election. Other candidates were forced to either leave the country or have been arrested, including Tsikhanouskaya’s husband, popular video blogger Siarhei Tsikhanousky.

The protests have not let up since. Every week, tens of thousands of residents of Minsk, the capital, and other cities come out onto the streets to protest against Lukashenka, who has been in power for 26 years. In Minsk, the numbers of attendees have exceeded 100,000 - a huge figure for a city of two million. In response, Belarusian police have used riot batons and water cannons to disperse people. The EU has now sanctioned Belarusian officials for election falsification and police violence.

The police response was particularly brutal immediately after the election. In the days after 9 August, masked police officers detained people across Minsk, shooting flash grenades and rubber bullets at crowds, beating people on city streets, police vans and police stations. Several people died amid the violence: a special forces officer shot protester Alyaksandr Taraikousky dead in Minsk; in Brest, a plain clothes police officer shot Hienadz Shutau, a biker; and Mikita Kryutsou, a football fan, died in unclear circumstances in the city of Maladzyechna (the official version is suicide).

The exact number of people who have suffered at the hands of the Belarusian police is unknown. Belarusian state agencies do not publish statistics on violent incidents involving the police, but as we have discovered - they do collect this information.

Mediazona, a Russian media outlet which focuses on the law and justice system, recently received a data archive held by Belarus’ Investigative Committee from an anonymous source. These documents consist of several spreadsheets containing information about individual instances of police violence, as well as inspections concerning reports of torture. Analysis of these documents shows that the minimum number of people injured by Belarusian police during protests in August and September 2020 is 1,373 people.

Meanwhile, Lukashenka refuses to negotiate with protesters. Instead, in his public remarks, he constantly thanks the Belarusian police. “You have stopped this trash on the clean, comfortable [streets] of Minsk,” Lukashenka said in late September. Indeed, the Belarusian authorities have opened a criminal case into an “attempted coup of state power” by members of the Coordination Council, set up by the Belarusian opposition - of whom many have fled the country or are now under arrest. Ordinary protesters are also facing criminal cases. According to human rights defenders, 435 people are facing prosecution as a result of Belarus’ election campaign and the ensuing protests.

Despite the large number of injuries, the Belarusian authorities have not opened a single investigation into violence committed by police officers.

In cooperation with Mediazona, openDemocracy publishes their investigation in translation here. You can read the full version here.

Akrestsina detention centre in Minsk, one of the main sites of violence against people detained during Belarus' pro-democracy protests | (c) Kommersant Photo Agency/SIPA USA/PA Images. All rights reserved

Why we trust this data presented by an anonymous source

Mediazona was already familiar with one of the documents in the archive - a spreadsheet of injuries inflicted by flash grenades, rubber bullets and tear gas. We had previously received this document from a different anonymous source. Part of the records were accompanied by the names of hospitals in Minsk where injured people were taken. We showed this information to sources in Minsk City Hospital No. 10 and the city’s clinical emergency care hospital. In the latter, our data matched the hospital’s entire list of patients for that time, whereas our source in Hospital No. 10 stated that two of the people in our list did not contact them for medical treatment.

Many of the more serious cases connected to protesters’ eye injuries, amputations, comas and deaths have been described by journalists previously, including by Mediazona. Descriptions of these incidents matched information held in our archive.

We also checked information concerning beatings at Minsk’s Akrestsina jail against prisoner lists compiled by the Viasna human rights centre. The team also showed the documents to a source in one of the Investigative Committee’s central directorates. They confirmed the spreadsheets and other documents were genuine.
How we analysed the severity of the injuries

The Investigative Committee’s documents report medical diagnoses given to protesters, and from the majority of diagnoses it is clear how exactly protesters were injured. We have visualised these injuries via silhouettes representing each of the 1,373 people injured.

We categorised injuries by severity - light injuries (1), medium injuries (2) and heavy injuries (3). If part of someone’s body was not injured, we indicated it (0 points). We also analysed injuries in terms of how they were inflicted - beating, rubber bullets, flash grenades or gas.

We categorised bruising, contusions and light burns as light injuries; lacerated wounds, head injuries and multiple traumas - medium; and firearm wounds, internal injuries, broken bones and amputations - heavy.

With the average age of an injured person coming to 31, young men were most likely to be injured at the protests. The worst injuries came from rubber bullets and flash grenades.

A selection of protesters coded according to their injuries 

| Illustration: Maria Tolstova / Mediazona

Belarusian police aimed for protesters’ vital organs

Judging by injuries caused by rubber bullets (40 cases), it is clear that police officers often shot people in the head, chest and stomach when dispersing protests - and these weapons caused the most serious injuries. On 10 August, 34-year-old Alyaksandr Taraikousky died from a rubber bullet shot to the chest - holding his hands in the air, he had approached special forces officers near the Pushkinskaya metro station in Minsk.

One 24-year-old protester received a rubber bullet to the stomach, leading to a hernia of the small intestine; another participant, a 37-year-old businessman, had his rib cage penetrated by a rubber bullet, causing damage to his right lung. Doctors diagnosed him with open pneumothorax, where air accumulates between the chest wall and lung after an open chest wound - which in serious instances can lead to a collapsed lung.

“I was in a coma for three days, but I was awake for a few moments. The doctors say it’s rare, but it happens,” recalled Alyaksandr Pastukhau, whose lung was penetrated by a rubber bullet. “I remember how they cut my clothes off. The doctors’ speaking when they tried to straighten out my lung during the operation. And how my brain was panicking: it’s sending signals, but my body isn’t responding. And it was terrifying that I could wake up with brain damage. It’s surprising that they shot from such a short distance at my chest. In a way, it’s good they shot me in the right lung. If they’d shot me in the left, we might not be speaking now.”

When police fired rubber bullets at protesters’ heads, they caused head traumas and broke facial bones. For instance, the data shows how a 40-year-old man wound up in hospital with the following diagnosis: “closed head trauma, concussion, multiple gunshot injuries to the right jaw.” His rib cage, stomach and left thigh were also injured. Another protester, 29, was hit by a rubber bullet, which smashed through his maxillary sinus, just behind his cheek, fracturing his nose. Another person was shot with a rubber bullet in the eye, receiving a serious contusion.

Why does the Belarusian Investigative Committee hold data on injured persons and how many people were injured?

It is impossible to give an overall number of people injured at protests in Belarus. The data we received only relates to the situation in Minsk, although police used violence to disperse crowds in other cities. The data in our possession shows instances where law enforcement received information from a hospital or an injured party contacted them to report physical harm.

A source in Minsk City Hospital No.10, which received a large number of injured persons during the protests, explains that doctors contact the police regarding all incidents of physical violence. An emergency service worker in Minsk confirms this procedure: “If we write a diagnosis such as closed head trauma, dislocation, broken bones and so on in our call-out cards, you need to indicate how the injury was caused. We just put down ‘criminals’ and wrote that, according to the patients, the injuries were caused by police officers, riot police and traffic police.” According to this source, this kind of information is automatically passed on to the police, and doctors have to later give statements.

Other protesters may have received injuries that did not require treatment in hospital, or could have contacted volunteer medics for help. Many people injured during the protesters did not contact the Investigative Committee - some may have thought it pointless, others may have feared criminal prosecution. There are cases where an official complaint led to a criminal case against someone injured during the protests - for example, this happened to Anastasia Dudina, whose eardrum was injured after a flash grenade exploded nearby. After leaving hospital, she wrote a complaint to the Investigative Committee, and then became a suspect in a criminal investigation into “mass unrest”.

This situation encourages people to go into hiding, leave the country or not contact Belarusian law enforcement. The 1,373 injuries in our archive are therefore only a minimal estimate of the numbers of injuries. In reality, there are definitely more.

How flash grenades injured protesters

Flash grenades were used en masse during the first days of the protest, and would explode at thigh level or lower when they hit crowds of people, leaving injuries across a person’s whole body - while the grenade’s shock wave led to serious bruising and head traumas.

Indeed, grenades used by Belarusian police caused no less serious injuries than rubber bullets. When a flash grenade exploded near one 30-year-old man, the explosion ripped off his right foot. For two other protesters, flash grenades broke a finger on their left hand, their left foot and their calf bone - shattering these bones into multiple pieces. A flash grenade also fractured a vertebra in a 33-year-old man’s lower back.

For one injured man, a fragment of a flash grenade entered his chest, leading to pneumothorax.

“I live near the Pushkinskaya Metro,” says Heorhiy Saikousky, a Minsk resident who lost a foot to a flash grenade. “On 10 August, I was coming home around 11pm with some friends. I heard some explosions, but I didn’t have internet access on my phone, and I didn’t understand what was going on. Suddenly I saw the police. They were around 100 metres from me. As far as I could tell, the protesters were near the Ice palace [an indoor sporting arena in Minsk], but there was no one really near me. I couldn’t have predicted that a flash grenade would fly into this empty space.”

Most people injured by riot equipment came to hospital straight off the street, avoiding police stations and detention centres. The more seriously injured people were sent to a military hospital, while the rest were divided between city hospitals and Minsk’s emergency hospital.

“We saw a lot of multiple injuries,” an emergency service worker tells us. “These are always closed head traumas and then different combinations: broken ribs, shoulder bones, hip bones, or broken extremities. Bruises, blunt force injuries, scratches - we weren’t coding these, we just described where they were.”



Video showing Belarusian police using flash grenades to disperse protesters in Minsk, on the evening of election day, 9 August
Most people were beaten after being detained by police, not during street clashes

More than half of the injuries took place in police vans, police stations and detention centres in Akrestsina and Zhodzina - that is, when people were not resisting the police, let alone represented a risk. Many were beaten on several occasions - during detention, then in the police van or station, and then in the detention centre. In many cases, this torture went on for several days.
Police specifically beat detainees on the head and buttocks

After being beaten at the Akrestsina detention centre and police stations, detainees were released with head traumas and bruising to their spine, abdomen, shoulders, buttocks and thighs. Around 200 people received head traumas and concussions. Some detainees were placed face-down on the floor or with their faces against the wall, and were then beaten with riot sticks. On 11 October, the NEXTA Telegram channel published a video showing how detainees were forced through a column of police officers, who beat them as they went.

More than 25 people contacted hospitals with broken bones and serious injuries. One young man, 21, was beaten until the main airway in his left lung was ruptured, causing air to escape from his lungs into his chest cavity. Another man the same age received two broken ribs. Indeed, the latter’s whole body was covered in bruises - his chest, back, thighs, knees, shoulders and left hand.

Injuries connected to sexual violence

Three detainees received injuries consistent with sexual violence either at the Akrestsina detention centre or en route there. A 31-year-old man was hospitalised with intramucosal hemorrhages of the rectum, a 29-year-old man had an anal fissure and bleeding. A third party, a 17-year-old man, received - aside from other injuries - an injury to his rectal mucosa.

Ales, a 30-year-old programmer (whose name has been changed), told journalists how he was raped. “The riot police demanded that I unlock my phone, and then called the senior officer. He started threatening me with inserting a riot stick into my anus. I was lying on the floor of the police van, and he cut my shorts and underwear open. He asked his colleagues for a condom. I was lying on the floor face-down, but I could see how he put the condom on the riot baton. And then he inserted it into my anus. He pulled it out and then asked for the password again. And then he began beating me - punching and kicking. I was hit in the ribs, the face, my teeth - two of them were broken.”

10 August: violence on the street - followed by beatings at Akrestsina detention centre, police stations

In Minsk, police organised the most brutal dispersal of protesters on 10 August. On city streets, not counting beatings in police stations and Akrestsina detention centre, 291 people received injuries. That day also saw mass detentions, with more than 3,000 people arrested. In the days after, law enforcement would beat detainees again and again.

Siarhei (name changed) was detained on 10 August, and recalls how he and other detainees were brought to Akrestsina. “When we were released [from the police van], they didn’t explain the rules - you couldn’t look around, they would just hit you and say: ‘Run!’ You run on, they beat you and say: ‘Get down!’ Then you run on and they hit you: ‘Hands behind your back!’ People didn’t understand where they’d ended up, but first they beat you, then they explain. By that point every one had been beaten - perhaps lightly, but still.”

People were then lined up on their knees along the wall in the Akrestsina detention centre yard.

“We ran out of the van and stood next to the fence on our knees,” Siarhei continues. “On our knees. Those who were beaten in the legs could not physically get on their knees and had to sit down. And then they were beaten with riot batons for that. They beat them until they themselves realised that someone couldn’t get on their knees, or they just dragged them away when someone fell.”

The next eruption of violence came on 13 September during a march on the Belarusian government residential compound in Drazdy just outside Minsk. For the first time in a month, more than two dozen cases of violence were reported in our data - and that’s when our data ends.

Belarusian law enforcement beat everybody, including women and teenagers

Violence by Belarusian security forces was conducted en masse and was not selective: officers did not try to suppress specific groups of people whom they considered a threat, but attempted to beat everybody they found.

Alyaksandr Lukashenka and Belarusian state propaganda insisted that the election rallies were attended mostly by drunks and drug users. “Some people are high, a lot of drunks, people with drugs,” is how Lukashenka described protesters immediately after the election. The data in our possession disproves this claim: the number of people whose diagnoses refer to intoxication is insignificant - less than 2%. There are no references in the medical reports of drug use.

The data refers to at least 24 injured persons under 18. They were beaten exactly the same as adults: under-age persons received concussions, cuts and bruises. One 17-year-old, Timur, was beaten to the extent that he had to be placed in a medically-induced coma.

The data refers to 57 women injured during the protests. The oldest of them is 72: on 12 August, police officers beat her near the investigative detention centre on Minsk’s Volodarsky Street, breaking her wrist. Women were subject to torture following detention, too. Judging by the seriousness of the injuries, it’s clear women were beaten exactly the same as men.

As far as we understand, not a single criminal investigation has been opened into the actions of Belarusian law enforcement during the protests. The Minsk Prosecutor’s Office refused to state whether torture committed in the Akrestsina detention centre is being investigated, stating that information was “for internal use”.

On Sunday 11 October, Belarusian law enforcement once again resorted to brutal detentions and beating protesters. The country’s deputy interior minister stated that the police are ready to use lethal force.

Since then, Belarusian authorities have dispersed Sunday protests in the country forcefully, but people continue to attend them. On 1 November, Minsk witnessed a “March against terror” - participants aimed to visit Kurapaty, a Soviet execution site outside the capital. The authorities, however, responded with force, and have charged more than 200 detainees as part of an investigation into “mass unrest” during the march.


Editor: Dmitry Treshchanin

Text: Maxim Litvarin, Anastasia Boiko, Yegor Skovoroda

Graphics: David Frenkel, Nikita Shulaev

Illustration: Maria Tolstova

Analysis: Yegor Skovoroda, Maxim Litavrin, Anastasia Boiko, David Frenkel, Dmitry Treshchanin, Anastasia Poryseva, Khatima Mutaeva, Viktoria Rozhitsyna, Mikhail Lebedev

Translation: openDemocracy

The enduring creativity of the #FreeBelarus movement
November 7, 2020
Portia Kentish


Portia Kentish


With most of the world focused on the US presidential election and the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic, the struggle for freedom in Belarus has faded into the background. But the innovative resilience of the country’s opposition movement is not something to be forgotten about.

For the past few months, ever since a rigged presidential election in August, Belarusians have endured harrowing repression in their fight for democratic freedoms. Hundreds of thousands of protesters have nevertheless defied the brutal actions of the country’s security forces to take to the streets of the capital Minsk, where artists and activists have joined forces with factory workers and civil servants to demand a new, free, and fair election.

Yet, as their fight continues, their oppressor is continuing to develop both covert and overt means of repression, with President Alexander Lukashenko showing no signs of backing down.

Belarusians have not given up hope

Just last week, opposition leader, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, by any objective measure the winner of August’s election, called for a nationwide general strike, after a demand for the president’s resignation fell on deaf ears. Once again, however, the authorities cracked down brutally, forcing many to return to work, and beating or arresting those who didn’t. Restaurants which came out on strike have since been closed down due to “health and safety” regulations. On social media, multiple videos have surfaced of Belarusian security forces storming into apartments in search of protesters, including pensioners and the disabled.

For many on the ground, the immediate cause for optimism that the protests offered back in August have since been replaced by the realisation that bringing about change will be a long haul. Mr Lukashenko himself has promised limited change and reform, although few – unsurprisingly – are taking his word for it.

In what often gets called “Europe’s last dictatorship”, protests have become as routine as their repression, and the country’s security forces aren’t showing any signs of relenting. In this, however, Belarusians are showing extraordinary creativity to ensure the movement does not get suffocated.

Many are using the encrypted messaging app Telegram to keep up the pressure, which has been a driving force of organisation for the opposition. Since the initial protests in August, many groups have localised, into cities, townships, sometimes even apartment blocks.

Through Telegram, anything from the distribution of pamphlets and ideas, to concerts and lectures have been organised, in a desperate bid to keep up momentum, and most of all, hope.

Changes

In the northern suburbs of the nation’s capital, a courtyard protest venue has sprung up, chosen for a mural symbolic of the opposition movement. It shows two DJs who, after being hired to perform at a pro-Lukashenko gathering, instead played the 1989 track Peremen (Changes) by Viktor Tsoi, symbol of a resistance against authoritarianism in the region. The square has since been unofficially renamed Changes Square, where musicians give concerts most weekends.

For many, this not only boosts morale, but provides a creative outlet. Similarly, the Belarusian rock band Dai Darogu! (Дай Дарогу!) recently released their seventh studio album, their most political yet, denouncing police brutality and aiming to capture the defiant spirit of protest. The band, which formed in the western city of Brest in 1998, aimed to once again use art as a defiant voice.

Yuri Stylsky, the band’s lead singer, dedicated their album, called Under the Howling of Dogs to “all the honest, courageous, sincere and fiery hearts” across his homeland. The album cover, illustrated by Ania Crook, echoes this sentiment, detailing a crowd of anti-government protesters.

Similar work has popped up all around the country, as artists continue to channel their talents into political resilience. A great example of this is the Belarusian art magazine, Chrysalis, which has developed an online ‘protest art’ exhibition of works from all around the country. The magazine, which virtually showcases work through its website and Instagram account aims to develops Belarus’s creative economy by providing an international platform for arises to express themselves, has given space for visual artists to speak out against repression, since the beginning of the #FreeBelarus movement.

“Contemporary art is completely absent in the concept of development of Belarus, but we believe that a healthy society cannot exist without it. Just like the economy, it cannot be successful without the creative part, while the situation in Belarus is critical and continues to degrade,” write the magazine’s editors. “We see a way to develop an intelligent economy and creative professions in the revival of Belarusian contemporary artists.”

‘Ordinary people commit evil’

These exhibitions have not only included illustrations and paintings but banners, photography, graffiti, and even tattoos, many of which feature the red and white motif of the old Belarusian flag that has become another symbol of the opposition. Many, such as this illustration by Yuliya Arabei emphasise the power of the people within the protest movement. Others aim to shed light on the injustice of police brutality, and the role of the security forces as “puppets” of the regime, such as this work by Katya Klitos.

Chrysalis has also used the movement as a way to highlight the pertinence of older works, such as this 2012 installation by Tima Radha called Stability, which alludes to similar themes of authoritarian state power built on violence and repression.

Young Belarusian artist Andrey Anro has taken a slightly different approach in his contribution to art pieces of the movement. His latest series called Person of the System instead aims to shed light on those contributing to keeping the Lukashenko regime in power.

“As Hannah Arendt wrote, ordinary people commit evil, accepting the order established in society as a norm and conscientiously fulfilling the obligations prescribed by the current law,” says Anro.

For those out on the streets, bringing a rucksack of essential items to every protest in case of arrest, the solidarity provided by Belarusian artists is ensuring that the movement endures.

The creativity of the opposition, whether that be via the use of Telegram to organise localised protests and concerts, or the visual art that speaks a thousands words, is all about sustaining the voice of those asking for freedom.