Bahdan Arlou is a social-media video producer for Current Time Digital.
A father and son are holed up in the Swedish Embassy in Minsk, where they took refuge in September 2020 from Belarusian security forces after joining pro-democracy protests. The Swedish authorities say the two men cannot claim political asylum at the embassy.
In Belarus, buying a bottle of mineral water is now political. A new app allows Belarusians to boycott companies linked to Alyaksandr Lukashenka by scanning bar codes on everyday products.
Belarus already has registered dozens of coronavirus deaths, but the country’s strongman leader, President Alyaksandr Lukashenka, still asserts that there will not be a single one. In power for nearly 26 years, this former Soviet-era farm boss is accustomed to blazing his way through force of will. But with the country’s COVID-19 infections spiraling upward, critics charge that trying to dictate reality is no longer an effective response.
