President Putin wagged his finger at the US in the wake of the storming of the Capitol,  claiming an equivalency between the protestors in Belarus who want to overturn their presidential election and the mob in Washington who wanted to overturn ours: if we condemn the Washington protestors as lawless troublemakers we should condemn those in Minsk too.  Does he have a point? Let’s break the argument down.

The Trump supporters believe our election was rigged so they came to Washington in the thousands to overturn it.   The opposition in Belarus and all of Europe believe their August vote was rigged and Lukashenka’s claim that he won amounts to a steal.   Thousands of protestors have marched since then. Lukashenka has tried to shut them down, saying they are being set on by “provocateurs”, but these average citizens are risking prison and sometimes torture to come out into the streets.  Yesterday one man set himself on fire in protest and is in critical condition. 

There have been many similar protests in Africa, Latin America, and Asia we could talk about, but let’s focus on these two for now: is there a difference? Should we condemn them as a danger to society or support them all in the name of freedom of expression?

There is a definite danger with mass protesting: you can’t control who joins in.  That leaves the way open for the provocateurs.  In Washington we don’t know how many of these guys were just hotheads who boiled over in the moment, or were militias who made a plan in advance to use violence to “take back the government.” In either case things can easily spin out of control when thousands are in the streets, and then you have looting and tear gas and police over-reacting and all the usual list of horrors.  Given that possibility, law-abiding citizens would probably applaud shutting things down before they start.

But you can’t.   Not in a real democracy where freedom of speech lies at the core of citizens’ rights.   Without it there can be no check on the powers that be.   The key of course is peaceful protest.  The right to protest should not be seen as license to break windows, loot, or hurt people.  As soon as anyone starts urging people in that direction, it’s incitement to violence and it’s jail time. So the peaceful nature of the Belarus protests is one thing that sets them apart from what happened in Washington.

The other distinguishing characteristic of course is the reason for the protests: stolen elections. In the USA every accusation from the Trump team was reviewed in independent courts and found to be without foundation. In Belarus numerous reports of fraud from poll workers were ignored. There have been no investigations. That leaves only protest and beyond that, revolution.

Putin himself faces street protests tomorrow (Saturday Jan. 23) for jailing a major opposition figure, Alexei Navalny, who just returned to Russia from a German hospital after being poisoned.  He is accused of fraud, taking money from his non-profits and spending it on himself.  Putin has also thrown some of Navalny’s key supporters in prison for calling on Russians to fill the streets on Saturday and demand his release.   The Kremlin is justifying these measures, because of the dangers of provocateurs. They’re  also worried about young people heeding the opposition’s cry, and are calling on parents to take their kids on walks in the woods on Saturday to keep them off the streets! Let’s see what happens.  

We need to think of a better way to hold elections in every part of the world. More on that next time.