- Why is Lukashenko doing this? What does he gain from the deliberate, brutal beatings of people? Everyone’s phones and the internet are overflowing with evidence of outright fascist torture. ⠀ It’s a question you hear often now. ⠀ The answer is very simple. It is right there in the first line of the Wikipedia article on “terror.” ⠀ Terror (from the Latin *terror*, “fear, horror”) is the intimidation of political opponents through physical violence. ⠀ It is not that the police are beating people on their own initiative (although some units of Belarus’s Interior Ministry clearly tried to recruit people with sadistic tendencies). It is the leadership, and Lukashenko himself, giving the order: hit as hard as possible. Drag someone off a bench right there in the courtyard and beat them with batons so the whole courtyard can see. ⠀ Lukashenko and the Interior Ministry leadership understand the math. There are only a few thousand OMON riot police and Internal Troops soldiers. They are working around the clock. Detainees often say the OMON officers complain about lack of sleep, that they are constantly exhausted and take out their anger on those they detain because of it. ⠀ Yes, they are armed. Equipped. Trained. They have a license to use violence. But it is still only a few thousand people on round-the-clock duty against almost the entire country of 10 million. ⠀ A few more days of protests, and the authorities will have no “manpower” left. ⠀ That is why they rely on terror and intimidation alone. They urgently need to clear people off the streets. So they have to beat people demonstratively, in a way that makes a mother beg her children: don’t go protest. That makes a wife say to her husband through tears: don’t go. That produces videos of sobbing doctors beaten for helping the injured. ⠀ To spread horror through beatings. To intimidate. To keep people at home. And then, perhaps, things will gradually settle down. ⠀ But you know, when I look at these monstrous videos, what they show is not only lawlessness, but also the reaction of those filming. ⠀ There are people who did not vote for Tikhanovskaya. But there are no monsters who can watch their neighbor being kicked and clubbed for no reason. There is no one who likes seeing people lined up at a bus stop and shot with rubber bullets like targets at a shooting range. For amusement and intimidation. ⠀ I listen to the comments and realize: soon even 3% will seem to Lukashenko like an unattainable approval rating. Fear is powerful, but despair and outrage may be stronger. 🤍❤️🤍 Long live Belarus!