Belarus Follow-Up: Regime to Ban People from Standing and Doing Nothing

Soon-to-be-Illegal Activity in BelarusIlya Mouzkykantskii reports for The New York Times: 

Iron-fisted authorities in Belarus have responded to a burst of creative modes of protest by young protesters with a rather surreal innovation of their own: a law that prohibits people from standing together and doing nothing.

A draft law published Friday prohibits the “joint mass presence of citizens in a public place that has been chosen beforehand, including an outdoor space, and at a scheduled time for the purpose of a form of action or inaction that has been planned beforehand and is a form of public expression of the public or political sentiments or protest".

See also Belarus Update: Getting to the Truth on Repression and Social Media

Anyone proven to be taking part in such a gathering would be subject to up to 15 days of administrative arrest, the draft says.

Recent protests, galvanized by an economic crisis and organized through social networks by Belarussian dissidents based outside the country, have encouraged ingenious methods of expression. People have simultaneously and publicly clapped or strolled, or had their cellphone alarms go off together.

The ever-subtler expressions of defiance have drawn extraordinary suppressive measures, as security forces engage in the harshest crackdown of President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko’s 17 years in power. Plainclothes police officers have detained nearly 2,000 people since the so-called clapping protests began in June, in many cases because they were seen clapping or standing near people who were. More than 500 have received sentences of 5 to 15 days.

Permits have long been required for political protests, and they are very rarely granted to the opposition. Silent gatherings, however, have never required a permit.

In an online statement, the organizers of the protests said that the “regime is hammering nails into its own coffin.”

Danila Barysevich, an administrator for the online group responsible for organizing the protests, called the draft law “absurd", noting the law could be used against “every queue, every group of people in a park".

Another new focus of repression is a Russian song, “We Want Change,” by Viktor Tsoi. After the song was adopted as a kind of revolutionary anthem by the growing youth protest movement, opposition news sources reported that the song had been banned from the Belarussian airwaves.