How Ordinary Belarusians Defeated Riot Police, Communal Utility Services, And Regime

Small victories every day.

Every day, Belarusians continue not only to defend their freedom, but also to gain small victories over the security forces and the regime, while it pretends to be invincible. The Village Belarus recalled several funny cases from the summer-autumn protest season, when Belarusians defeated security officials, communal utility services and other pillars of the regime.

The white-red-white pursuit of riot police

The main meme of the march is a guy with a white-red-white flag, who set off in pursuit of a detachment of security forces. Despite the fact that at the end of the full version of this video an annoyed riot policeman chases away the pursuer by threatening him with a machine gun, the act of the unknown Belarusian looks bold, funny and inspiring.

Nina Bahinskaya, who overcame the horror of a paddy wagon

“The horror of a paddy wagon” still haunts those few Belarusians who have not yet been in it. The security officials, of course, know about this, and from time to time they decorate the city landscape with paddy wagon rallies, so that we would remember, and be afraid of them. But the system is already malfunctioning: paddy wagons have stopped scaring people, and ideas “what if we all voluntarily line up to them in a queue” are increasingly popping up in social networks. In the photographs from the Saturday women's march, we see dozens of brave and proud Belarusian women, who with stoic calmness go to the gloomy vehicle. Moreover, the law-enforcers have to chase some women away from the paddy wagons, as happened with Nina Bahinskaya.

Nina was detained on Saturday at the women's march; on the way to the paddy wagon, the police traditionally took away her white-red-white flag. Finding herself on the steps of a car as gray as a Sunday riot policeman, Nina demanded, no, not to let her out, but to immediately return the flag. Bahinskaya, along with everyone, was brought to the police department, they wanted to put her out, but the 73-year-old woman “occupied” the paddy wagon, and said that she would not go anywhere until her flag was returned to her. According to Nina, the security forces “lured her out” by promising that they would “look for” the flag.

Women beat off men from security officials

The ability to beat off men from security officials is a new superpower of Belarusian women, which they discovered this summer. Thanks to the women, some men (including our photographer Yauhen Yerchak) went home from the protests, not to Akrestsin Street detention center. It is difficult to say why it is a woman who stands up for a man who disarms both the impudent secret agent and the faceless “olive guy”. Perhaps, in the training manual of the security forces there is simply no instruction on how to beat off a man from a woman.

Everyone is admiring the courage of the Belarusian women, and yet we ask you to treat the security forces as gently as possible - otherwise the rescue operation may turn out to be a real prison term for you.

Security officials are scraping the wall of one transformer box, while DJs of Change are taking over all the transformer boxes of the city

The history of the “courtyard of changes” is one of the most inspiring in the current protest season, at least someone may think that it is about defeat, not victory - after all, the mural continues to be regularly scraped and painted over, the residents are given huge fines for fictitious violations, and Stsiapan Latypau is incriminated with an absolutely absurd case. But the history of the Square of Changes is definitely about victory. After all, while two secret agents are trying to scrape off the restored mural for the 15th time, dozens of new ones appear on other transformer boxes in the city. In addition, such a noble work as guarding and cleaning the transformer box, we are sure, has a powerful psychotherapeutic effect. Just imagine the internal battle that takes place in the mind of a riot policeman at this moment - it is unlikely that ideological mantras help these guys drown out the feeling that they are doing some kind of nonsense.

“Each riot policeman should have a transformer box!” appears a suitable line for a new program of social support for the security forces, which Lukashenka could still have time to launch.

By the way, we know that initially the “DJs of Change” were drawn not on the transformer box, but on the ventilation shaft of the underground garage, but people are used to saying “transformer box”. It's like cattail, which is almost always called reed.

Unarmed women and students are stronger (faster, more agile) than armed riot police

The brave riot police are so self-confident guys that they think that they can really always and everywhere effectively resist the protesters. It is enough just to run scary and scream scary tio make people run away from you in fear. And those who did not run away are weaklings who cannot run properly. But the Belarusian reality has more than once broken the template of the people in black: it turns out that ordinary students can break through the riot police cordon. But nobody taught them this.

The flag is running away from the security forces, the security forces are running away from the flag owners

Somewhere in Japan, a comic would have already been drawn about this (and also an animated series, a computer game, a phone case and sushi with the taste of the white-red-white flag would have appeared), but so far we are only shooting short, but very motivating videos about how the flag running away from the security officials who came to remove it. Of course, it does not run away by itself: it is the residents of the Cascade residential complex that cut the cable at the moment when the rescuers' articulated lift rises to this very cable with three flags on it (and, of course, it is not raised in order to save the flags from the wind and rain).

And another time, residents of the same Cascade chased away the security officials who were removing the flag, so that they had to flee home.

Last year, the mural “Digital World” in Kamennaya Horka was recognized as the best in the world, but now we are not talking about it. Although also about wall paintings from Kamennaya Horka. On the wall of the transformer substation, one of the variants of the amateur flag of the microdistrict was painted: a white-red-white flag with mountains in the middle (the flag will also work for Salihorsk, Svetlahorsk, Horki, and Zalataya Horka). Then communal workers came and tried to paint it over. “I’m a simple person,” thinks a typical communal service chief. - I see the white-red-white flag - I send my people to paint the green stripe over it. And this time the wall would have turned into red-green communal utilities art, but it wasn't there. According to Chai z Varennem, the mural was treated with a hydrophobic compound, which prevents fresh paint from adhering to it. Well, the utility services guys still tried to spoil the art as best they could, but something went wrong, and the landscape only got better: green grass and a peaceful blue sky appeared on it. And in the comments to the tweet, they are now discussing how you can make such a composition at home.