2020 Belarusian protests


The 2020 Belarusian protests, nicknamed the Slippers Revolution, or Anti-Cockroach Revolution are a series of ongoing series of street protests and the start of a movement against President Alexander Lukashenko, as part of the Belarusian democracy movement in the lead up to the 2020 Belarusian presidential election, to prevent a 6th term in office.

Events

The businessman and blogger Siarhei Tsikhanouski labeled Lukashenko as "a cockroach" as in the children's poem "The Mighty Cockroach", with the slipper signifying stamping the cockroach was detained in late May 2020 with accusations of being a foreign agent.
In June 2020, a lowered approval of Lukashenko amid his handling of the coronavirus pandemic led to street protests, after Lukashenko dismissed the threat of the COVID-19 virus. Many opposition candidates registered for the next election as a result of the movement, but many of the candidates were arrested.
On 19 June, Lukashenko announced that "he has foiled a coup attempt", resulting in the arrest of main opposition rival Viktar Babaryka. Babarynka has stated that the charges of bribery and corruption were falsified and that the arrest was politically motivated to stop him from winning the elections. Opposition activists, journalists and bloggers have also been arrested as part of the crackdown. Lukashenko has claimed that the opposition protests are part of a foreign plot. The wife of Siarhei Tsikhanouski, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, registered as a candidate in the upcoming election. after the arrest of opposition candidate, Viktar Babaryka.
The protests have started suggestions that it is likely the conflict will last for months and escalate in violence, and it may evolve in a full blown revolution, akin to how the Euromaidan protests turned into a revolution in the Ukraine in 2014. It has been noted by the think-tank German Marshall Fund that they are already more widespread and more brutally repressed than previous protests.
The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe reported that it would not be monitoring the 2020 election as it had not been sent a timely invitation. It had not recognised any elections in Belarus as free and fair since 1995.
On July 23, Lukashenko blamed the BBC and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty for encouraging riots and threatened to ban Western media from reporting on the election.