Course Theme:
What is meant by the expression “winners write history?” How do historical narratives get constructed, and how do they impact thinking in the present?
Alexander Lukashenko is the president of the country, Belarus. He has long been
affiliated with Russia and the Soviet Union, as he had served for the Soviet Russian army as well as attended the Communist Youth Organization and Party of Belarus when it used to be part of the USSR. Later in 1990, he got his first major government position as he was elected to the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic Parliament. He became the first president of the newly independent nation in 1994 and has still been ruling ever since. During his rule, Lukashenko has committed a number of crimes, such as electoral fraud and violation of human rights.
Multiple times, Lukashenko has abused his power to get his way and silence opposing voices.(He is also supported by V. Putin, contributing to his power and ability to get away with things.) In 1996, when western democratic nations criticized his choices and authority, he temporarily expelled their ambassadors. He also has been suspected of electoral vote tampering and has also violently crushed all protests against him. Recently, in the 2020 election, he made the absurd claim that he had won 80 percent of votes, which many political leaders believed as a lie, and which also sparked outrage and protests for thousands, in which 450 cases of torture and rape of detainees were reported. Many western leaders described his brutal repression of protests as state terrorism.
Recently, the Ryanair Flight 4978 that was scheduled to land in Vilnius, Lithuania, was subject to Lukashenko’s oppressive regime. The flight had been diverted to Belarus, with the reason behind it being a state/government-sponsored hijacking to retrieve and arrest Roman Protasevich, a prominent Belarusian opposition journalist who had been living in exile since 2019. The operation to retrieve the journalist was allegedly staged, with a bomb hoax on the plane as all a part of Lukashenko’s plan to retrieve the journalist. The reasoning behind Protasevich arrest was that he was a co-founder of an account on the messaging app Telegram, that helped organize the mass protests that occurred last year as retaliation for Lukashenko’s presidential election. As a consequence, he has been officially identified as a terrorist for Belarus and has now been placed on an official terrorist list. Inside reports have gotten video footage of Protasevich himself stating that he is being ‘corrected’ for his mishaps and organizing mass unrest in the city of Minsk. In this video footage, Protasevich seems to have a broken nose and bruises on his body/face, causing people to believe that the journalist is facing torture and physical assault in prison. All of this is a massive human rights violation and has many crimes charged up with it, as Lukashenko has hijacked a plane with false information, silenced opposing voices, as well as tortured those who rebelled or went against him.
This all connects to the course theme because President Lukashenko, a man with lots of power or a ‘winner’, could be writing history for Belarus. With all of his power and ability to silence those against him, Lukashenko is creating a false historical narrative in Belarus with lots of false information, lack of information, propaganda, and other sorts of manipulation and deceit.
Discussion Questions:
Can Roman Protasevich's arrest and the hijacking of the plane be justified, due to the fact that he helped organize a protest with thousands involved causing chaos?
How can Lukashenko’s oppressive regime be overcome? What can be done to fix his oppressive regime and fix the government/corruption present in Belarus?
Why would Lukashenko violate human rights to silence those who opposed him? What benefit does he get from this?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/05/24/faq-lukashenko-belarus/
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/24/world/europe/belarus-flight-ban.html
.
No comments:
Post a Comment