How a homemaker with no political experience took on Europe’s longest-serving dictator

Svetlana Tikhanovskaya became a symbol for the democratic future Belarus could have, not the autocratic one it has now.

By Alex Ward@AlexWardVoxalex.ward@vox.com Updated Aug 11, 2020,

Presidential candidate Svetlana Tikhanovskaya casts her vote into a ballot box during the 2020 Belarusian presidential election. Valery Sharifulin/TASS/Getty Images


One of Europe’s last remaining dictators held onto power after facing his greatest political challenge in decades — and rigged an election to do so.

Alexander Lukashenko has served as Belarus’s president since 1994, when he won the presidency in the country’s last national democratic election since gaining independence from the Soviet Union. That’s because Lukashenko has remained in power ever since thanks to a combination of brutal repression and rigged elections. He’s now Europe’s longest-serving leader.

But after 26 years, many Belarusians have had enough of Lukashenko. Hundreds of thousands of people have rallied for weeks against him in the largest protests of the country’s post-Soviet history.

A government-backed poll from April found only a third of Belarusians trusted him — one of the lowest ratings of his rule. While good polling is hard to come by in Belarus, that one made sense: The dictator both minimized and mishandled his nation’s coronavirus outbreak, oversaw a collapsing economy, and struggled to keep an encroaching Russia at bay.

With such dismal approval ratings, most experts believe Lukashenko would’ve lost a free and fair vote. Which is why Lukashenko did everything in his power to make sure Sunday’s election was anything but free and fair.

And sure enough, Lukashenko won Sunday’s election in a landslide, receiving over 80 percent of the vote. “I don’t know who voted for him, how could he get 80 percent?” a Belarusian named Dmitri, who wouldn’t divulge his last name for security reasons, told the New York Times on Sunday.

His “victory” came down to a tried-and-true autocratic method: brutality. “That [was] the strategy for Lukashenko for this election,” said Ryhor Astapenia, a Belarus expert at the Chatham House think tank in Britain. “No sweeteners, only repression.”

The 65-year-old former collective farm director jailed two of the three top opposition candidates and barred the third from running; he also detained journalists and even alleged Russian mercenaries the regime claimed were trying to disrupt the election prior to the vote.

But his tactics didn’t quell people’s aspirations for democracy. It lit them on fire thanks in part to the efforts of one determined stay-at-home mom — who just had to flee the country for the safety of her children.

The homemaker versus the dictator

One of Lukashenko’s main opponents in this year’s election was Sergei Tikhanovsky, a famous YouTuber who made his name highlighting Belarus’s many problems. Two days after he announced his candidacy for president, he was arrested by the regime on charges of violating public order and election laws.

That might’ve been the end of the story. But it wasn’t: That’s because his wife, a 37-year-old former English translator turned homemaker named Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, stepped in to run for president instead.

She proved wildly successful, coalescing a nationwide movement to defeat the longtime leader and then hold actually fair elections. That she did so despite having no political experience, acknowledging she didn’t want to be president, and reminding crowds she’d prefer to be making cutlets for her children made her rise all the more surprising.

That energy persisted even after the election results were announced Sunday. The regime-run election commission said the challenger only received about 10 percent of the vote, far less than the 80 percent she garnered in some unbiased exit polls. Thousands poured into the streets of Minsk, Belarus’s capital, on Sunday to protest the election’s results.

Demonstrators have been met with tear gas, stun grenades, and rubber bullets shot by regime forces, even though observers on the scene have yet to report one instance of violence by anti-Lukashenko protesters. Reports indicate at least one protester has died.

Viasna, a Belarusian human rights group, says they know of about 140 people among thousands detained by authorities while many more sustained injuries. The Trump administration on Monday proclaimed support for the democratic movement.

Tikhanovskaya made clear she rejected the regime-announced results. “I will believe my own eyes — the majority was for us,” she said during a Monday press conference in Minsk. “The authorities should think about how to peacefully hand over power to us,” she continued. “I consider myself the winner of this election.”Former candidate in the 2020 Belarusian presidential election Svetlana Tikhanovskaya during a press conference on the election results on August 10, 2020. Natalia Fedosenko/TASS/Getty Images

But the next day, state-run media showed a video of Tikhanovskaya reading a statement calling for an end to protests. Internet sleuths believe the couch from which she read the statement was the same one in Belarus’s election commission office. (Her team had said the opposition leader couldn’t be reached on Monday after she visited that office.) If true, it could signal Tikhanovskaya was forced to call for an end to anti-Lukashenko demonstrations by the regime.

She has since fled to Lithuania, according to that country’s foreign minister, and it’s unclear how long she’ll be there or what, exactly, she’ll do.

> Belarusians! I urge you to be prudent and respect the law. I don’t want blood and violence. I ask you not to confront the police, not to go out to the square, so as not to endanger your life. Take care of yourself and your loved ones. "— Franak Viačorka (@franakviacorka) August 11, 2020

Internet users identified the room by the sofa. It's the office of Central Electoral Commission, where God knows what Tsikhanouskaya has seen or heard. Pro-government media were first published and distributed this video. They believe people are stupid. pic.twitter.com/Wt4FawXEQW— Franak Viačorka (@franakviacorka) August 11, 2020

In the meantime, the Tikhanovskaya-led opposition aims for the pressure to stay on the dictator long term, hoping to sustain a historic call for change. Some believe it could work. “This is the beginning of the end of his era,” Valiantsin Stefanovic, Viasna’s deputy chairman, told me. “This is a new reality for him, because nobody loves him anymore. People want to be free.”

Others don’t believe the remarkable scenes of the past few weeks mean Belarus has moved much closer to a post-Lukashenko future. “There’s definitely something different about this now,” said Matthew Rojansky, an expert on Eastern Europe at the Woodrow Wilson Center think tank in Washington, “but that doesn’t mean this is the breakthrough moment.”

Which means, depressingly enough, Lukashenko most likely will survive the greatest threat yet to his rule — though he won’t come out of it completely unscathed.
How Lukashenko saw his control slip

When Lukashenko became Belarus’s president in 1994 — after receiving 80 percent of the vote in Belarus’s last fair election — he entered office with a staunch anti-corruption message. His right-wing populism resonated with citizens seeking to improve their lives after the fall of the Soviet Union and who blamed the nation’s woes on its sclerotic and incompetent run by the communist-era establishment.

Lukashenko promised to save Belarus. He would tax the rich, steer the economy in the right direction, and root out the corruption which he claimed, “like an all-devouring octopus has ensnared all government organs with its tentacles.”

But, over the years, Lukashenko became the exact enemy he set out to fight. “He moved from good governance to embracing and not denying iron-fistedness,” said Rojansky. Namely, he resisted needed economic reforms, stayed cozy with Russia, and cracked down on dissenters.

As Human Rights Watch noted in 2019, “Belarus continued to harass and pressure civil society activists and independent media,” including denying journalists entry to official events and arresting peaceful protesters. It’s also widely believed that Lukashenko ordered the kidnappings and killings of at least four political opponents. For those and other reasons, opposition figures boycotted or rarely entered recent elections to dethrone the autocrat.

Despite all that, Lukashenko maintained a semblance of popularity because the economy didn’t nosedive on his watch. That minimal success had less to do with Lukashenko’s management, though, and more to do with loans coming in from Russia to keep the country afloat and secure its fealty to Moscow.

As of last summer, Belarus owed Russia about $7.5 billion, causing tensions between the two countries. In an effort to signal his independence and that he hadn’t mismanaged the economy, Lukashenko said his country would give Russia $1 billion per year until the debt was repaid. Further, Belarus would no longer request more funds. “Stop yelling that you are providing for us,” he said in a speech last year, clearly directing his comments at the Kremlin.

Such bravado may also have been a cover. Russia had mostly stopped injecting cash into Belarus, and Minsk struggled to get financial support from other capitals (though Beijing did provide a $500 million loan last year).

As a result, Belarus’s GDP has basically been flat since 2012, forcing thousands to seek work in nearby countries like Poland, work multiple jobs, or gain employment in the country’s byzantine public sector.

That has long spelled trouble for Lukashenko. “An authoritarian system can maintain its popularity as long as it can provide the goods for the population,” said Eleanor Bindman, an expert on post-Soviet states and authoritarian regimes at Manchester Metropolitan University in the UK. “Once that social and economic side of the bargain goes away, people start thinking: ‘What are we getting out of this?’”

That thought clearly crept up more and more as Lukashenko failed to handle his nation’s coronavirus crisis. He called concerns about an outbreak a mass “psychosis” and claimed all it took to kill the virus was a little vodka or a quick trip to the sauna. “No one in the country will die from coronavirus,” he said in April, acknowledging two months later that he contracted the disease but had no symptoms.

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, with a raised fist, and Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, left, on June 24, in Moscow. Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images

His lack of alarm kept the regime from imposing any social restrictions or offering any help to those on the front lines of the national response. “The state completely withdrew without providing support for medical workers,” Maryia Rohava, a Belarus expert at the University of Oslo in Norway, told me. They gave no guidelines and barely provided information at all, she continued, and led Belarusians to take matters into their own hands.

The country has an educated and highly tech-savvy population, and they used that know-how to crowdfund support for medical professionals. One campaign, #bycovid19, provided around $130,000 and 27,000 respirators in April alone. “Our goal is to make sure this system doesn’t collapse,” Andrej Stryzhak, the group’s cofounder, told the Guardian at the time. Such a collapse was possible, as cases increased while just one mask sold on the country’s black market for nearly $16.

Those kinds of campaigns brought hundreds of thousands of Belarusians together online — mostly on Telegram — to both form a movement and realize together that the country was in dire straits with Lukashenko at the helm. Any support the leader had quickly eroded. “We saw many people flip because of Covid-19, poverty, and his attitude toward current problems,” Franak Viacorka, an independent journalist in Belarus, told me.

The longstanding opposition to Lukashenko finally had its greatest opening — the dictator was weak. But the person who would soon lead the opposition was still taking care of her two kids at home, unaware she was about to become the most effective politician to challenge Lukashenko in decades.
How Tikhanovskaya rose to her unlikely moment

Initially three men looked to take the mantle of Lukashenko’s top challenger. But one by one, the dictator found a way to brush them aside before the election — a move experts said was rare because he usually waits to put down the opposition after the vote.

Victor Babariko, widely seen as the most likely opposition candidate, was barred by the regime from running. Valery Tsepkalo, the country’s former ambassador to the US, also couldn’t register for the election and subsequently fled to Russia fearing for his life.

The third man was Sergei Tikhanovsky, the popular YouTuber and fierce Lukashenko critic, who was repeatedly arrested for trying to get in the race. In response, Tikhanovsky in May pushed for his wife Svetlana to run in his stead, an idea experts told me gained support among thousands connected on Telegram. She collected the requisite 100,000 signatures which allowed her to register with regime-controlled election authorities.

Somewhat surprisingly, they approved her registration.

Experts told me Lukashenko usually allows some opposition candidates to run against him. Doing so lets the regime keep the appearance of a fair election and also allows those with grievances to express them once in a while, hoping complaints die down soon after the vote. That seems to have happened in this case, but the president also didn’t seem too threatened by Tikhanovskaya’s candidacy.

One reason was Tikhanovskaya had no political experience at all. In fact, she had never spoken at a political rally before. The other was Lukashenko holds sexist, outdated views of women. “Society is not mature enough to vote for a woman,” Lukashenko said in July, adding that the weight of the presidency would lead her to “collapse, poor thing.”

But Tikhanovskaya didn’t collapse under pressure. Instead, she united the opposition and brought hundreds of thousands of people into the streets in support.

Tsepkalo’s wife and Babariko’s campaign manager, also a woman, backed her campaign during a July announcement that went viral after each made a sign with their hands: a heart, a fist in a fist-pump position, and a “V” for victory. The moment provided immense momentum to her candidacy, as it became clear three women symbolized a youth movement against the old dictator.

“This was a surprising and brilliant move by the opposition,” Tatyana Margolin, the regional director for Open Society’s Eurasia program, told me. “They undoubtedly saw that together they [would] be stronger, so they joined forces rather quickly.”

Presidential candidate Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, center, poses with Veronika Tsepkalo, left, the wife of opposition figure Valery Tsepkalo, and Maria Kolesnikova, Viktor Babaryko’s campaign chief, right, at a rally near Minsk on July 31, 2020. Sergei Gapon/AFP/Getty Images

But Tikhanovskaya’s story was compelling in its own right: To take on the role of political leader, she sent her kids away to an undisclosed location to keep them out of the regime’s clutches. She also made clear that in the unlikely event she actually won, she would quickly hold free elections to let someone who actually wanted to be president to take over.

“I don’t need power, but my husband is behind bars,” Tikhanovskaya told a large Minsk crowd in July. “I’m tired of putting up with it. I’m tired of being silent. I’m tired of being afraid.”

She outlined some reforms, namely her husband’s platform of giving more money to the poor by taking cash away from the corrupt elite. But it’s what she and her female backers represented — a country without an entrenched, corrupt, dangerous regime in charge — that garnered her immense support.

Ironically, it was similar to the message the dictator offered back in 1994. “She’s trying to out-Lukashenko Lukashenko,” the Wilson Center’s Rojansky told me.

That play worked, as she drew hundreds of thousands across the country — not just in cities, but even small towns that have historically been Lukashenko strongholds — into the opposition. “She’s mostly a symbol of the grievances that people are trying to express,” said the University of Oslo’s Rohava.

Those grievances are now being expressed by many on Belarus’s streets. The likelihood that they’ll change anything in the short term, though, is unlikely.
Lukashenko is likely to hold on to power — for now

Belarus has long seen anti-Lukashenko protests like the ones on Minsk’s streets in recent weeks. In 2017, for example, the regime imposed a tax on part-time or unemployed workers, leading thousands to demonstrate against the government. In the end, Lukashenko cracked down on that movement like he had on others in previous years.

Some experts I spoke to said that given enough repression and time, it’s likely the current movement will fizzle out despite its unprecedented size and scope. “The regime is durable,” said Konstantin Ash, an expert on protests in Belarus at the University of Central Florida. “Lukashenko isn’t in a sky-is-falling situation. He’s still very much in charge.”

The only way to tell his grip on power is slipping, Ash added, was if members of the country’s security forces — which receive an inordinate amount of funding and authority from the autocrat — start to defect. “That’s the crucial element.”

So far that hasn’t happened. Instead, security forces have arrested 3,000 people in Minsk and 2,000 others around the country. Lukashenko has vowed to keep the pressure on protesters he called “sheep” under foreign control on Monday. “People need to settle down, calm down.”

But others are convinced Lukashenko’s increased repression, deadly failings, and the size of the democratic movement — now well-connected online — means the dictator’s days are numbered. “This is the best opportunity for this to be the beginning of the end for Lukashenko,” Manchester Metropolitan University’s Bindman told me. “I’d be very surprised if he made it through another five-year term without any other troubles.”

Stefanovic, the human rights leader in Belarus, said what’s also changed is the nation’s attitudes toward female leadership. That could sustain the movement far longer than Lukashenko might think. “Our society is ready to have a woman as the leader of the country,” he told me. “What matters is what a leader says, not if they’re a woman or man.”

The wild card in all of this, though, is Russia. Moscow wants deeper economic and political integration with Belarus, mainly in an effort to ensure it doesn’t lean westward and away from the Kremlin’s grip. That has some worried Russian President Vladimir Putin may launch a Ukraine-like invasion into the Eastern European nation.

Stephen Sestanovich, a Russia expert at the Council on Foreign Relations think tank, though, isn’t so concerned. “The Russians can’t like their choices much,” he said. “Lukashenko has been an ornery partner for years, extremely hard to subdue. But the idea that he’d be brought low by a popular outpouring of opposition to dictatorship and bad management? From Putin’s point of view, that’s pretty awful too.”

What’s more, he added, it’s not like Belarus’s people are clamoring for a more Soviet-like future. Belarus “may look like a poor, unreformed Soviet backwater, but it’s been a nominally independent country now for close to 30 years,” Sestanovich said. “If there’s a constituency for returning to the Russian fold, Putin hasn’t found it.”

Anti-Lukashenko activists, then, may not have to contend with the complication of a Russian invasion. What they have to deal with — a weakened dictator who still wields immense power — will be tough enough.

Yemen's heritage battered first by bombs, then floods

Issued on: 13/08/2020 -

Yemeni labourers remove rubble ahead of restoration works on the site of a collapsed UNESCO-listed building following heavy rains in the Old City of the Yemeni capital Sanaa Mohammed HUWAIS AFP

Sanaa (AFP)

Muddy waters lap overfoot in Sanaa's Old City, inhabited without interruption for more than 2,500 years but now facing disaster after floods that threaten the collapse of irreplaceable houses.

The deluge risks finishing off the destruction of its distinctive buildings with their ochre brick facades and white latticework windows, experts say.

The foundations were already weakened by bombings in Yemen's long war.


"Since dawn we have been trying to clean the mud off the roofs and drain the water -- but it's no use," said Ali al-Ward, a long-time resident.

"We sleep with fear in the pits of our stomachs. We are between life and death," said the frail man with a greying beard as he surveyed the damage in the UNESCO World Heritage-listed site.

Flooding is common in Yemen at this time of year, blighting the poorest country on the Arabian peninsula that is in the grips of what the UN calls the world's worst humanitarian disaster.

The city has since 2014 endured a conflict that pits government forces against Huthi rebels who hold much of the country's north.

But the flooding has been particularly severe this year.

At least 172 people have been killed across Yemen since mid-July, according to official sources and local authorities.

Torrential rains have also threatened other UNESCO heritage sites in Yemen, including in Shibam further east, renowned for its high-rise mud-brick "skyscrapers".

In the capital Sanaa, 106 buildings, including five in the Old City, have been destroyed so far and 156 damaged, a source at the Huthi health ministry told AFP.

With water still lapping at the fragile structures, many of which have had no maintenance for years, there are fears that others will tumble.

"Our homes are made with earth walls. We hope civil society groups will find a solution for us," said Mohammed al-Khamissi, a young resident of the Old City.

- 'Literally melting' -

The extent of the damage can be blamed on years of "negligence and a lack of maintenance", said Doaa al-Wassiei, an official with the authority that manages Yemen's historic towns.

"Sanaa is literally melting. The bombings which struck the town have made the foundations fragile. The rain has come to finish off whatever was left," said Wassiei, who is also a member of a heritage protection group.

"Undoubtedly budgets are squeezed because of the war but this is about our identity, and just as we defend our country, so we must defend our identity."

She called for more coordination between government and civil society groups involved in conservation.

The work of those involved in protecting the nation's heritage was being hampered by dysfunction and a lack of political will.

The 2015 intervention of a Saudi-led coalition in support of the government against the Iran-backed Huthis escalated the conflict on many levels.

Coalition warplanes have been accused of targeting civilians as well as historic sites including the Old City.

The war has claimed tens of thousands of lives, and displaced some three million people. About 24 million Yemenis -- four-fifths of the population -- are dependent on some form of humanitarian aid.

- 'Unprecedented catastrophe' -

Shibam, located in Hadramawt province 500 kilometres (310 miles) from the capital, is also on the UNESCO heritage list and like Sanaa has not been spared by the elements.

At least four homes have been completely destroyed and 15 damaged at the 16th-century site dubbed the "Manhattan of the Desert" because of its striking mud-brick towers.

On the ground, labourers have been working to fill cracks in walls.

"We've paid particular attention to this town because it's of significant historical importance," Abdelwahab Abdallah bin Ali Jaber, who oversees the site, told AFP.

"The town appears to have been struck by what appears to be an unprecedented catastrophe."

UNESCO said it "profoundly regrets the loss of life and property in a number of historic centres in Yemen, including in the World Heritage sites".

"Along with its international partners, UNESCO has been mobilising resources and expertise to safeguard Yemen's cultural heritage by implementing a number of projects" including reconstruction and assisting local authorities, it said.

strs-aem/gw/sls/hc/leg

© 2020 AFP

CT scan reveals story behind ‘mummy of the screaming woman’ from Deir El-Bahari’s Royal Cachette

The Egyptian princess died of a heart attack 3,000 years ago, the scans reveal

Nevine El-Aref , Friday 17 Jul 2020


A study carried out by renowned Egyptologist Zahi Hawass and Sahar Saleem, professor of radiology at Cairo University who specialises in scanning mummies, has solved the mystery of “the mummy of the screaming woman” from the Royal Cachette in Deir El-Bahari.

Hawass told Ahram Online that the CT study and analysis conducted on the mummy revealed that severe atherosclerosis of the coronary arteries had led to sudden death of the Egyptian princess from a heart attack.

He said that the ancient Egyptian embalming process had preserved the posture of the princess at the moment of death.

Hawass explains that the story began in 1881, when the Royal Cachette of Deir El-Bahari was discovered in Luxor.

The site is where the priests of the 21st and 22nd dynasties hid royal members from previous dynasties, to protect them from grave robbers.




The Royal Cachette contained the "mummy of the screaming man.” Recent studies using CT scans and DNA, done by the scientific team of the Egyptian Mummy Project, proved that the mummy is that of Pentawere, son of King Ramses III, who was forced to commit suicide by hanging as a punishment for his involvement in the killing of his father, in what is known as the Harem Conspiracy.

The murderous son was punished by not being embalmed; his body was wrapped in a sheep skin, which indicates that he was considered "unclean" and that his fate was to be punished in the afterlife.

Other mummies were wrapped in white linen and carefully mummified.

The same Royal Cachette in Deir El-Bahari also contained a mummy of a woman showing signs of terror, pain and opened mouth as if screaming, hence known as "the mummy of the screaming woman."




To solve this mystery, Hawass and Saleem carried out a study and examined the mummy with a CT machine located at the Egyptian Museum.

Writings in the ancient hieratic Egyptian language on the linen wraps of the mummy read: “The royal daughter, the royal sister of Meret Amon.”

However, the mummy was considered unknown and was thus designated the “mummy of the unknown woman A” as there were many princesses with the same name, for example Meret Amun, daughter of King Seqenenre of the end of the seventeenth dynasty (1558-1553 BC), and also Meret Amun, daughter of King Ramses II (1279-1213 BC) from the nineteenth dynasty.

The results of CT scan indicates that the “mummy of the screaming woman” is a woman who died in her sixth decade.

Unlike Pentawere, the body of the woman received a good mummification treatment. Consequently, it is obvious that the circumstances of her death are different.

Hawass said that the CT results indicate that the mummy suffered from severe degree of atherosclerosis, which affected many arteries of the body.

He explains that atherosclerosis is a degenerative disease that progressively affects the arterial wall, leading to a narrowing of the cavity and blockage of the vessel.

The CT scan showed that she suffered from atherosclerosis of the right and left coronary arteries, neck arteries, abdominal aorta and iliac arteries, as well as the arteries of the lower extremities.

Cardiac diseases, especially coronary artery disease, are the leading cause of sudden death in adults in the modern period.

It seems that the “screaming woman” died suddenly while in her current body posture, with flexed crossed legs. Consequent to death, her head was tilted to the right side and her jaw dropped.

“We assume that the dead body of ‘the screaming woman’ might not have been discovered until hours later, enough to develop rigor mortis,” said Hawass.

“We assume that the embalmers likely mummified the contracted body of the ‘screaming woman’ before it decomposed or relaxed. The embalmers were thus unable to secure the mouth closed or put the contracted body in the state of lying down, as was usual with the other mummies, thus preserving her facial expression and posture at the time of death,” he said.

Belarus says 700 more held as women stage new rallies

In the capital and the town of Baranovichi, southwest of Minsk, drivers attacked members of traffic police

AFP , Thursday 13 Aug 2020



Belarusian women, one of them carrying a poster reads "My brother is not a criminal", rally in solidarity with protesters injured in the latest rallies against the results of the country's presidential election in Minsk, Belarus, Thursday, Aug. 13, 2020. AP


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Belarus' ruler quashes opposition protest after vote


Opposition in Belarus tell Lukashenko to quit as West condemns crackdown after election

Police in Belarus said Thursday they had detained 700 more people during a fourth day of protests over the ex-Soviet country's disputed election.

"Some 700 people have been detained for participating in illegal mass events" on Wednesday, the ministry said in a statement, bringing the total number of people detained to more than 6,700.

The ministry said it had registered fewer instances of mass unrest "although the level of aggression towards members of law enforcement remains high".

A total of 103 members of law enforcement have been injured with 28 hospitalised since Sunday, the interior ministry said.

In the capital and the town of Baranovichi, southwest of Minsk, drivers attacked members of traffic police, the ministry said.

"Members of law enforcement used arms to stop the transgressors," it said.

Rallies and clashes with riot police erupted in the authoritarian ex-Soviet country amid claims long-serving leader Alexander Lukashenko has stolen Sunday's election from his rival Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, 37.

Dozens have been injured in the post-election unrest and two people died.

Police have acknowledged opening fire on demonstrators and wounding one in the southwestern city of Brest on the Polish border on Tuesday night.

For the second day in a row, dozens of women joined hands in the capital on Thursday to form human chains, many wearing white and holding flowers, to denounce the violence.

A religious procession was set to take place later in the day.

Thousands arrested in Belarus amid outcry over election



Supporters attend a campaign rally for Belarusian opposition presidential candidate Svetlana Tikhanovskaya in Minsk, Belarus, on July 30. Photo by Tatyana Zenkovich/EPA-EFE

Aug. 12 (UPI) -- Belarus authorities have arrested more than 6,000 demonstrators over the past three days amid substantial opposition to election results that declared President Alexander Lukashenko the winner of another term.

Lukashenko's opponents say police have used violence to quell the protests since election officials said the president won re-election in a landslide Sunday.

Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, Lukashenko's chief opponent, fled to neighboring Lithuania for her own safety, Lithuanian Foreign Affairs Minister Linas Linkevicius confirmed Tuesday.

Belarus's interior ministry said about 3,000 arrests were made after rallies on Monday night, another 2,000 on Tuesday and 1,000 early Wednesday. Officials shut down Internet service this week but it appeared to improve on Wednesday.

Tikhanovskava had taken her husband's place as the leading opposition candidate after he was put in prison before the election. She rejected the preliminary results before fleeing Belarus.

U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy called on President Donald Trump to withdraw his nominee for ambassador to Belarus due to the unrest.

"Right now, this would be a huge mistake," Murphy tweeted. "It would look like an endorsement of Lukashenko's crackdown. The Senate should set aside this nomination."
upi.com/7028404

Many of Beirut's hospitals 'non-functional' following deadly blast, WHO warns

Issued on: 13/08/2020 - VIDEO AT THE END

People wearing face masks move a gurney at a damaged hospital following Tuesday's blast in Beirut, Lebanon August 5, 2020. © REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir

Text by:FRANCE 24Follow

The St. George Hospital where Soha Khalaf works as a nurse lies less than a mile from Beirut port. She had no time to recover from the enormous explosion that blasted over the city.

The ceiling crashed onto her head and tears streamed down her face, but she stuck to her task.

"People ran here yelling, 'Please, we need the ER.' But the ER was gone. And wherever I turned, I saw staff rushing down from other floors screaming," recalled Khalaf, assistant head nurse at the emergency room of Lebanon's oldest hospital.

Needles flew across the hall. Blood covered the floor. The lights went out.

Hundreds of people poured in from across the Lebanese capital after the Aug. 4 warehouse blast, which killed more than 170 people and demolished neighbourhoods.

"We just kept working, even as some of us bled, and we cried and cried."

With her colleagues, Khalaf stitched, intubated and bandaged victims on the pavement outside the ER. They stopped random cars to send patients to other hospitals, and relied on light from mobile phones as it got dark.

Across Beirut, doctors and nurses recounted a night of horror that shook up veteran medical workers in a city no stranger to explosions.

The aftermath of the blast has also raised fears for a healthcare system in tatters, already fighting a coronavirus outbreak which has seen 87 deaths and more than 7,100 cases since February.

Hospitals "non-functional"

More than half of Beirut healthcare facilities evaluated by the World Health Organisation are "non-functional" following last week's deadly port explosion, the agency said Wednesday.

Following an assessment of 55 clinics and health centres in the Lebanese capital, "we know now that just over 50 percent are non-functional", said WHO's regional emergency director Richard Brennan at a virtual press conference in Cairo.

Three major hospitals were non-functional and another three operating at well below normal capacity, he said.

Impact of financial crisis

Beirut's hospitals - which long attracted patients from around the region - have also been wrestling with the country's financial meltdown since late last year.

There are shortages in everything from dialysis equipment to syringes, with the state owing hospitals millions of dollars in arrears.

Now with hospitals turned into trauma centers and coronavirus cases still rising, some healthcare workers are asking: how can the system cope?

"The knockout"

On the night of the blast, hospitals used two months' worth of supplies, said Rona Halabi, spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross.

The explosion, which injured more than 6,000 people, knocked out three hospitals in Beirut and damaged 12 other facilities. Days later, pressure piled on thanks to hundreds of injuries at protests against Lebanon's leaders.

"These times are unparalleled to say the least," Halabi said, warning that the need for mental health care was also rising after scores of people suffered trauma.

"I have seen many explosions and a war. But I've never seen what I saw on August 4," said Khalaf, who has worked at St. George for 28 years.

The blast killed four nurses there. A few floors above, a doctor had delivered a baby as the building shook.

The next day, Khalaf and her friends returned to help clear rubble from the blast, which officials blamed on explosive material stored in unsafe conditions at the port.

When the shockwaves hit Naji Abi Rached's hospital all 17 elevators crashed. Staff had to carry some patients down eight flights of stairs. They could not evacuate patients in the COVID-19 ward.

Abi Rached, medical director at the nonprofit Lebanese Hospital Geitaoui, said the virus could now spread faster. With nearly a quarter of a million people homeless, the risk has grown. Lebanon recorded on Tuesday 300 new infections and seven deaths.

"This blast dealt the final blow, the knockout," he said.

Still, a week later, with the help of volunteers, the ER was running again. The dialysis center also opened, although with shattered windows.

For Beatrice Karam, a nephrologist who returned to Beirut after living abroad, the past week killed any hope for stability. Many of her friends felt the same, she said, warning of a looming exodus of doctors.

"It's like there was a blast inside of me too. And I had no feelings anymore, and I just want to leave."

(FRANCE 24 with AFP and REUTERS)

Mali forces fire tear gas to clear Bamako protesters

AFP , Wednesday 12 Aug 2020


Supporters of the Imam Mahmoud Dicko and other opposition political parties attend a mass protest demanding the resignation of Mali's President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita in Bamako, Mali August 11, 2020. REUTERS


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Security forces in Mali's capital fired tear gas Wednesday to clear hundreds of protesters from a central square, where they had camped overnight following a protest demanding the president's resignation.

About 1,000 people spent the night on the streets of the capital Bamako, an AFP journalist said, before national guardsmen and gendarmes broke them up early in the morning.

"This is a provocation from the regime," said Nouhou Sarr, from the Mali's opposition June 5 Movement. "Rounds of tear gas will not deter us".

Aminata Diallo, a 19-year-old opposition supporter, said that security forces began dispersing the protesters in the early morning while people were eating and washing.

Thousands of protesters marched in Bamako on Tuesday, despite rainfall and pleas from mediators to stay home, to demand the resignation of embattled President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita.

The rally marked a resumption of opposition protests after a weeks-long truce in the June 5 Movement's push to topple the 75-year-old leader.

The loose alliance of opposition and religious leaders has been channeling deep anger in Mali over a dire economy, perceived government corruption and an eight-year jihadist conflict.

Its campaign plunged Mali into crisis last month when 11 people died during three days of unrest following an anti-Keita protest, in the worst political strife Mali has seen in years.

The 15-nation ECOWAS bloc stepped in to mediate, with its heads of government suggesting the formation of a new unity government to end the crisis, while sticking by Keita.

The June 5 Movement has repeatedly rejected the proposals and continues to demand Keita's departure.

The group also ignored a plea from former Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, the chief ECOWAS mediator to Mali, who on Monday urged them stop protesting and to enter dialogue.

The poor Sahel nation's neighbours and allies are anxious to prevent it sliding into chaos.

Swathes of Mali's territory are already outside of the control of the government, which is struggling to contain a jihadist insurgency which first emerged in 2012, and which has claimed thousands of lives.

Outcry in Somalia as new bill would allow child marriage

AP , Wednesday 12 Aug 2020


FILE PHOTO: Zeinab, 14, attends a class at a school near a camp for internally displaced people from drought hit areas in Dollow, Somalia, April 3, 2017 REUTERS


An outcry is rising in Somalia as parliament considers a bill that would allow child marriage once a girl's sexual organs mature and would allow forced marriage as long as the family gives their consent.

The bill is a dramatic reworking of years of efforts by civil society to bring forward a proposed law to give more protections to women in one of the world's most conservative countries.

The new Sexual Intercourse Related Crimes Bill ``would represent a major setback in the fight against sexual violence in Somalia and across the globe'' and should be withdrawn immediately, the United Nations special representative on sexual violence in conflict, Pramila Patten, said in a statement Tuesday.

The bill also weakens protections for victims of sexual violence, she said.

Already more than 45% of young women in Somalia were married or ``in union'' before age 18, according to a United Nations analysis in 2014-15.

Somalia in 2013 agreed with the U.N. to improve its sexual violence laws, and after five years of work a sexual offenses bill was approved by the Council of Ministers and sent to parliament. But last year the speaker of the House of the People sent the bill back ``in a process that may have deviated from established law'' asking for ``substantive amendments,'' the U.N. special representative said.

The new bill ``risks legitimizing child marriage, among other alarming practices, and must be prevented from passing into law,'' U.N. human rights chief Michelle Bachelet said this week, warning that its passage would ``send a worrying signal to other states in the region.''

Thousands of people in Somalia are circulating a petition against the bill, including Ilwad Elman with the Mogadishu-based Elman Peace organization.

As Somalia prepared to mark International Youth Day on Wednesday, Elman tweeted this week: ``I don't wanna see any Somali officials participating online to celebrate ... when you're trying to steal their childhood away from them RIGHT NOW with the intercourse bill legalizing child marriage.''

The U.N. mission to Somalia in a separate statement has called the new bill ``deeply flawed'' and urged parliament to re-introduce the original one. That original bill ``will be vital in preventing and criminalizing all sexual offenses,'' the Somalia representative for the U.N. Population Fund, Anders Thomsen, said.

``Big moment for MPs to decide Somalia's future values,'' the British ambassador to Somalia, Ben Fender, has tweeted.

The contentious new bill comes as women's rights groups openly worry that the coronavirus pandemic and related travel restrictions in Somalia have worsened violence against women and female genital mutilation. Nearly all Somali women and girls have been subjected to that practice.

Some 68% of more than 300 service providers across the country have reported an increase in gender-based violence, including rape, since the pandemic began, UNFPA said in a report last month.

Nearly a third of respondents, including more than 750 community members, said they believed child marriages had increased in part because of economic pressures and in part because schools have been disrupted.

And in some cases, health facilities have closed, limiting access to care.

GOOD NEWS
Wind and solar power at record high in 2020, coal dips: analysis

Issued on: 13/08/2020 -

Despite a near-record drop in power demand due to the pandemic, renewables' share of the electricity mix was up 14 percent compared to the same period last year 

Christof STACHE AFP/File

Paris (AFP)

Wind and solar produced a record 10 percent of global electricity in the first half of 2020 as the world's coal plant fleet ran at less than half its capacity, analysis published Thursday showed.

Despite a near-record drop in power demand due to the pandemic, renewables accounted for 1,129 terawatt-hours in January-June, compared with 992 in the first six months of 2019, according to a report by the Ember energy think tank.

Overall, the percentage of power drawn from wind and solar has more than doubled from 4.6 percent in 2015 -- the year of the landmark Paris deal on climate change.


On the other hand, generation from coal -- the most polluting fossil fuel -- fell 8.3 percent in the first half of 2020, the analysis showed.

This was despite leading emitter China increasing its share of the global coal fleet slightly.

"From 2015 it's an incredible amount of growth (in solar and wind), but even at 10 percent it's not completely transformational," Dave Jones, senior electricity analyst at Ember, told AFP.

"When we ask is it enough what we are really talking about is, how fast are emissions falling?

"Thirty percent of fossil fuel emissions globally are just from coal power plants, so coal fired power generation needs to collapse quickly in order to limit climate change," said Jones.

The analysis showed that many major economies -- including China, the United States, India, Japan, Brazil and Turkey -- now generate at least 10 percent of their electricity through wind and solar.

Britain and the European Union were singled out for particular praise, deriving 21 and 33 percent of their power from renewables, respectively.

- 'Not fast enough' -

Under the Paris Agreement, nations committed to limit temperature rises to "well below" two degrees Celsius (3.6 Farenheit) above pre-industrial levels, mainly through sweeping emissions cuts.

The accord also aims for a safer cap of 1.5C of warming.

To reach this, the United Nations says emissions must fall 7.6 percent annually this decade.

Jones said that while 30 percent of coal's decline this year could be attributed to increased wind and solar generation, the rest was likely due to the economic slowdown caused by COVID-19.

"A large part of this is obviously due to the pandemic rather than long term trends and -- let's be honest -- it's not fast enough if your target is 1.5 C," he said.

A study published last week in Nature Climate Change found that absent a rapid switch away from fossil fuels, the unprecedented fall in emissions due to COVID-19 would do virtually nothing to slow climate change.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that coal use needs to fall 13 percent every year this decade to keep the 1.5-C goal in play.

China, the world's leading polluter, reduced its coal production just two percent so far this year despite its economic slowdown caused by the pandemic.

"Where is China's plan to collapse that coal generation by 2030?" said Jones.

"At the moment it doesn't exist."

© 2020 AFP

Young Latinos vent pandemic fury after lost 2020

Issued on: 13/08/2020 -

Uruguayan Felipe Paz (front) poses with friends before playing football in Montevideo on August 6, 2020, amid the new coronavirus pandemic

 Pablo PORCIUNCULA AFP

Montevideo (AFP)

For four young adults across Latin America, 2020 was meant to be a year of freedom and opportunity. Instead, the coronavirus pandemic brought confinement and frustration.

Classes went online and friendships faded, coming-of-age rituals were canceled and first loves were cut short.

Their only hope? That it may all soon be over.


- Sofia, 19, Chile, pirouette expert -

This year was supposed to be key for promising ballet dancer Sofia Shaw.

Originally from Chillan in central Chile, Shaw was able to move to the capital Santiago to pursue her dream thanks to her own perseverance and the support of her mother, who works as an in-house maid.

Shaw made it into Santiago's municipal ballet school in 2019.

With her father not around, both mother and daughter were dedicated to Shaw's dance ambitions.

"For this year, 2020, I am going to give it my all. I am going to really improve and it's going to go well for me," the 19-year-old told herself before the pandemic struck.

But in March, as the start of classes approached, her life came to a standstill.

"They said quarantine would only last two weeks. I was hopeful," she said.

But online classes are just not the same for the dancer, who has even installed a barre at which to practice in her small apartment.

"Sometimes I lift my legs and bang into the wall. But at least I can do the basics."

In Chile, the COVID-19 outbreak not only disrupted lives across the country, but it also cut short the social protests that had rocked the country since October 2019.

Shaw was in her first year of ballet school when she found herself surrounded by tear gas, rubber bullets and anti-riot tanks.

"I am so angry! I came to Santiago with the idea of becoming a professional ballet dancer, and all these situations happen in the country."

- Jazmin, 17, Argentina, graduation without classes -

Jazmin Islas is struggling to cope as her last year of high school in La Plata, Argentina was totally transformed.

"I had so many expectations. I thought this year was going to be non-stop fun," she said.

In Latin America, pre-university rituals start on the first day of the last year of high school.

When the special moment arrived for Islas, she and her classmates wore face paint, lit flares and danced to the rhythm of a samba-style "batucada."

Little did they know that the following day, the rituals would cease.

"We thought it would be a short break. No one ever imagined this," she lamented.

Islas chatted with friends by video calls, only to see the interactions dry up over time.

"Every day we do the same thing, so we don't have much to say," she said.

The blow of seeing the traditional graduation trip to snow-topped Bariloche -- a town in the southern Patagonia region -- possibly canceled was hard to take.

The pink and blue jumpers Islas and her friends had picked out -- which were meant to be the focus of numerous selfies -- are now being worn to keep warm at home during the southern hemisphere winter.

The future medical student wonders if the last ritual of the year -- the goodbye dinner scheduled for December 9 -- will even go ahead.

"I have lost all hope," Islas said.

- Felipe, 19, Uruguay, university student on pause -

Felipe Paz began his economy and communications course at Uruguay's oldest public university in Montevideo on a Tuesday.

By Friday, evening classes were canceled. Uruguay had just declared a health emergency.

It was a Friday 13 that Paz would never forget.

"For all of us, it's a year we aren't going to get a second chance at, we aren't going to experience that first year of university," he said.

However, unlike worse-hit neighboring countries such as Brazil and Argentina, Uruguay -- a rural country with four times as many cows as humans -- never imposed a lockdown, which meant Paz was still able to visit his girlfriend Victoria.

But with social distancing measures and online classes, Paz admits friendships have changed.

"Something so striking and unprecedented changes our vision, our way of seeing people. Now I appreciate one friend much more, and others are less important than I thought they were," he said.

- Francisco, 20, Argentina, love under lockdown -

Francisco Avalos only managed to celebrate one month with his new girlfriend Guadalupe before lockdown was imposed in Buenos Aires.

He recounts how she baked him biscuits and wrote: "One month and counting. I love you."

By the next monthly milestone, they were stuck at home.

There were no more celebrations for the couple, who live 40 kilometers (25 miles) apart.

By the fourth month, Avalos felt he had to find a new way to say "I am still here."

So he started ordering food to be delivered to Guadalupe: breakfast, tortas (similar to pancakes), burgers and once, even a dozen donuts.

Now taking the pandemic in their stride, the couple plan video calls a couple of times a week.

"It's a way of getting around the lockdown," said Avalos. "At the beginning we would talk a lot about how bad we felt, but now we are trying to avoid that and make the best of it."

Looking to the future, Avalos says: "The first thing I want to do when I get out is to spend an afternoon together, go to the park and drink (traditional Argentinian beverage) mate, from dawn to dusk."

© 2020 AFP

Biden's deep Israel ties could ease Obama-era tensions: experts

THAT MEANS THE DSA AND THE LEFT HAVE TO PUSH RECOGNITION OF PALESTINE

Issued on: 13/08/2020

Joe Biden giving a speech in Tel Aviv in 2010 

DAVID FURST AFP/File

Jerusalem (AFP)

During Joe Biden's first trip to Israel in 1973, he met prime minister Golda Meir, who chain-smoked as she detailed regional security threats days before the Yom Kippur War.

Biden, a newly elected senator at the time, later described that meeting as "one of the most consequential" of his life. In the more than four decades since, his career has been punctuated by a staunch defence of Israel, especially in its handling of the Palestinian conflict.

Biden, set to become the Democratic Party's presidential nominee next week, will face in Donald Trump a president that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has described as Israel's best friend to ever sit in the White House.

Netanyahu's acrimonious relationship with Biden's old boss, former president Barack Obama, is well documented.

But some experts say a Biden win would be welcomed across Israel's political and military establishment -- not just by Netanyahu's rivals on the left.

Biden has long been a vocal supporter of the Jewish state, saying in a 2015 speech that the US must uphold its "sacred promise to protect the homeland of the Jewish people".

Such a history of defending Israel is key to winning the trust of Israeli leaders, perpetually sensitive to international criticism.

"We like people who love us," said Nadav Tamir, a past diplomat and foreign policy advisor to former Israeli president Shimon Peres.

"There is no doubt Biden is a friend who has very strong emotions for Israel," he told AFP.

But experts suggested Biden could also restore the traditional American role of interlocutor between Israel and the Palestinians.

The Palestinian Authority has cut ties with Trump, accusing him of egregious bias towards Israel.

Biden "will do much better than Trump on the real issues because he understands that the Israel-Palestinian issue is not a zero-sum game," Tamir said.

- Not just Obama's VP -

Biden served in an Obama administration that often clashed with Israel.

Netanyahu was outraged by the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and, in an unprecedented diplomatic slight, took advantage of a Republican party invitation to condemn it in front of Congress without a presidential invitation.

Just weeks before Obama's term ended, Washington abstained on a UN Security Council resolution condemning Jewish settlement construction in east Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank, a decision that left Netanyahu fuming.

"We cannot hide it. There is a problem between Israeli officials and the Democrats," said Eldad Shavit of Tel Aviv University's Institute for National Security Studies.

But Shavit, a former military intelligence officer who worked in Netanyahu's office from 2011 to 2015, stressed that Biden was comfortingly familiar to Israel's political class.

"Biden knows us and we know him," Shavit said.

- Jerusalem embassy --

Biden's record on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict extends beyond the flashpoints of the Obama years.

He supported recognising Jerusalem as Israel's capital two decades before Trump triggered global outcry by doing so.

Biden supported a 1995 Senate bill to establish a US embassy in Jerusalem by 1999, saying the move would "send the right signal".

His 2020 campaign says that if elected, Biden would not reverse Trump's embassy move, but would reopen a consulate in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem "to engage the Palestinians".

Biden has also dismissed Trump's controversial Middle East peace proposal as a "political stunt" and pledged to pursue fresh negotiations on a two-state solution with the Palestinians at the table.

The Palestinian Authority was not consulted on Trump's plan, while Netanyahu's government gave substantial input.

- Political comfort zone -

Tamir voiced concern that Biden is steeped in an American political tradition that urges disagreements with Israel to remain discreet.

During the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising, Biden pointedly refused to criticise a 2001 Israeli missile strike in Nablus that killed two children, saying disputes with Israel should be "aired privately", even after George W. Bush's administration had publicly condemned the incident.

While Biden has openly criticised Israel since then, Tamir argued that he remains naturally inclined to address pro-Israeli audiences and reference his affection for the Jewish state, absent any tough love.

"He needs to get out of his political comfort zone... (and) leverage his superpower force" on Israel, by pushing it to consider difficult but essential decisions, like seeking a viable resolution with the Palestinians, Tamir said.

As Shavit noted, Biden may be compelled to alter his approach towards Israel because the Democratic Party now includes "more progressive" Israel sceptics, notably supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders, who has called Netanyahu a "reactionary racist".

Whether he is capable of adopting a tougher public posture towards Israel is an important but "open question", Tamir said.

He added: "You need to push us, because the Israeli political system is so deadlocked, you cannot reach a historic decision without being pushed."

© 2020 AFP