Eastern Europe - August 13, 2020 Down with the government of hunger, misery, death and repression of Lukashenko! The people want the fall of the regime! On August 9, a new electoral farce was consummated in Belarus, which gave Aleksander Lukashenko, who has been in power for almost three decades (26 years), as the winner with more than 80% of the votes. Lukashenko, who is a man that comes from the kidney of the old CP of the Soviet Union, is the only president that Belarus has had since the capitalist restoration and for that reason he has been nicknamed "the last dictator of Europe". The Belarusian CP, which has a dozen MPs, supported Lukashenko's candidacy. After knowing the results, the masses took to the streets by the thousands in more than 30 cities of the country, for the third consecutive night, and the government responded with a brutal repression that left at least two dead, more than 250 injured and more than six thousand detainees. The official lists of detainees are not known, for which dozens of relatives are reporting missing youths. The conditions of detention are brutal. In cells for 5 detainees, there are 50, 70 people, who must remain standing, because they do not even have place to sit. There is not enough water and they are constantly beaten. Several factories, mainly in the metallurgical sector, have gone on strike for the release of prisoners and free presidential elections. Electoral fraud was the trigger, but in those demonstrations the just hatred of the masses who suffer persecution was expressed, and a high cost of life that worsens with the global economic crash accelerated by the pandemic, which in Belarus strongly hit the exploited and the national economy; the decrease in GDP is estimated at 6% by 2020. It is a political struggle of the masses against a regime of hunger, misery and repression. The main trade union center is in the hands of the rotten Stalinist bureaucracy of the CP allied to Lukashenko. And the "independent" unions that began to organize since the 1990s are a tiny minority and have suffered illegalisations, raids and persecution of their leaders, as happened in the days before the elections. Newspapers critical of the government are persecuted, most television channels are controlled by the state and digital media need a license from the state to operate. Even to this day, the government has cut the Internet to try to prevent communication between the protesters. Human rights organizations denounce that during July alone, more than 400 people were arrested for participating in peaceful demonstrations, because, as in Russia, demonstrations are prohibited. Likewise, the bourgeois "opposition" formed a coalition among the Christian Democracy, the Civic Party (conservatively oriented) and the Social Democracy. As its candidates had been proscribed it then featured Svitlana Tijanovskaya (wife of blogger and media producer Siarhei Tsikhanouski who had been a candidate but was unable to run as he was arrested). Other candidates, such as Tsepkalo (former Belarusian ambassador to the US, who fled to Russia under threat of arrest), who was not recognized as a candidate, and Babaryka (former Gazprombank banker, detained), gave their support to Tijanovskaya. To this opposition coalition, which weeks before the elections had called for mobilizations that were massive, the electoral commission only recognized 9.9% of the vote. Svetlana Tijanóvskaya, who on 8/11 decided to go into exile in Lithuania, called for the protests to cease. But by the thousands, the exploited ignored that call.   We insist that these gaps opened in the heights were taken advantage of by huge sectors of the masses who sneaked in, using the disputes between the bourgeois gangs, to express all their hatred against a government and the regime that condemns them to hunger, to misery and a brutal repression. Belarus is a former Soviet republic, which to this day continues to be embedded in the Russian economy. Through Belarus, as through Ukraine, Russian oil and gas reach Europe. 35% of Belarusan exports of machinery and equipment mainly for agriculture, minerals, chemical products, metals, textiles and food products go to Russia. In return, it receives cheap electricity and oil from Russia. This political and commercial relationship is tense and improves depending on the business. Since the 1990s, a State of Union agreement has been in force that establishes free transit and commercial agreements between both countries. And despite frequent crises in the relationship between the two countries, Putin was the first to recognize and congratulate Lukashenko. The role of Stalinism is a central leg of the Lukashenko government, and not just the CP of Belarus. As a sign of its servility, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (official) congratulated Lukashenko on his "victory". On behalf of the Central Committee, Zyuganov addressed him with a letter stating: "Dear Alexander Grigorievich! Please accept my sincere and heartfelt congratulations on your victory in the presidential election! ” (From the CPRF Official Website. "G. Zyuganov congratulated A.G. Lukashenko on the election to the post of President of Belarus". 08/08/20) Counterrevolutionary pacts were signed in Minsk to deflect and crush the heroic uprising of the Ukrainian masses of 2014. This uprising of the masses of Belarus, struggles to put the revolutionary forces of Eastern Europe back on their feet, as the miners of the east of Ukraine do, standing up against hunger and layoffs. Their combat is also a sibling to the struggle of the Russian exploited who seek to stand up against the hated Putin regime, that murderer of the Syrian masses on account of imperialism. In Belarus the masses face a reign of terror. That is why to defeat the Lukashenko dictatorship and win democratic freedoms, to have decent work, housing, health, wages and pensions, to win the right to form independent unions, to strike, the right to demonstrate and mobilize, to conquer the immediate and unconditional release of all political prisoners, to end the persecutions and false criminal cases against the protesters, the first task is: Down with the autocracy! Out with Lukashenko! Out with the oligarchy, heir to the traitors of the CP who handed over the USSR to imperialism! Dissolution of the police and intelligence services, and of the entire repressive apparatus of the state! Immediate and unconditional release of all the more than 6 thousand detained in the mobilizations! It is necessary to expropriate without compensation and under workers' control the companies, industry and natural resources that were stolen by the old bureaucrats who became a new possessing class and handed over the former USSR to imperialism. All imperialist companies and banks must be expropriated without compensation and under workers' control. The lands must be also expropriated without compensation from the hands of the oligarchy and imperialism. To achieve this, the workers and exploited of Belarus must return to the path of the heroic October revolution: Open the way to the workers' and soldiers' councils! For a Soviet Belarus of red workers and soldiers, without dictators or traitorous Stalinist bureaucrats! From Portugal to the Russian steppes, a single working class and the same struggle against the same enemy: imperialism, the bankers and the oligarchs. For the United Socialist States of Europe from Portugal to the Russian steppes!

August 13, 2020 Breaking News The proletariat of Belarus enters the class fight See more