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WOW2: August's Trailblazing Women and Events in Our History - August 9 through August 16, 2022 [1]
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Date: 2022-08-13
August 14, 2020 – A second day of protests in Belarus, as growing numbers of women, many wearing white and holding flowers, paraded the broad avenues of central Minsk, in response to the gruesome violence which has been inflicted on thousands of Belarusians. After Alexander Lukashenko, the authoritarian president of Belarus since 1994, claimed to have won the August 9 election by an implausible 80%, Belarusian workers took to the streets in protest, only to be met by some of the worst police violence in modern European history. Even some people who were not protesting, including a man on his way home from work, and an accredited journalist waving his ID, were arrested and badly beaten by police gangs. “We are here to show solidarity with all our men who were beaten up and abused,” said Tatyana, a 31-year-old waitress who was at the very front of a column of about 1,000 women holding a white flag with her friend, which she said was a sign of their desire for no more violence. By the following evening, thousands of protesters descended on the Belarusian parliament, potentially setting the scene for a new show-down with riot police. As the demand for change intensifies and reaches even the factories that are the pride of Alexander Lukashenko’s neo-Soviet economy, the authoritarian ruler ends the week clinging on to power in defiance of an ever-broader coalition of opponents. But from the beginning, this has been an uprising inspired and led by women. After several male presidential candidates were arrested or fled in the run-up to the vote, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the wife of one of them, stepped in. Together with two other women,
they offered a simple program that inspired many Belarusians: swift new elections that would be free and fair. Lukashenko, misreading the mood of the country he has led for 26 years, laughed at Tikhanovskaya, suggesting she should focus on cooking dinner for her children. The attacks only made people admire the resolve of Tikhanovskaya more. “The three of us were able to show that we had taken responsibly for what is happening and for the future of Belarus,” said Maria Kolesnikova, the only one of the all-female trio who remained in Belarus, in an interview in central Minsk. “The West won’t help, Russia won’t help, we can only help ourselves. Our female faces became a signal for all women – and for the men too – that every person should take responsibility.”
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https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/8/13/2115960/-WOW2-August-s-Trailblazing-Women-and-Events-in-Our-History-August-9-through-August-16-2022
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