Only 'Suitcase Lady' Is Worth Mentioning!

Wuhan means more than just covid.

Yesterday, many acquaintances suddenly remembered that the covid pandemic has its first anniversary these days – exactly five years ago, in December 2019, the first cases of pneumonia of unknown origin with a severe course were recorded in Wuhan. Then there was worldwide spread, quarantines, closed borders and deaths. And still with the word "Wuhan", the first association is the coronavirus pandemic.

For me, in the light of recent events in the world, this Chinese toponym is associated with events not five years ago, but a century ago. The associative threads between then China and today's world seem to be getting stronger. It was in Wuhan in 1911 that a petty, spontaneous and quickly suppressed riot of artillery battalion soldiers led to the collapse of the three-hundred-year-old Qing Dynasty. The soldiers rebelled not for the idea, but against the officer's arbitrariness, and refused to obey. The local riot was quickly suppressed. But two weeks later, a sapper battalion rebelled, joined by the same artillery division and two more infantry regiments. Together, they captured Wuhan, and the outgoing general Li Yuanhong immediately declared the Qing dynasty defeated, and China a republic. Then the authorities returned the disgraced commander Yuan Shikai from exile and appointed him prime minister. Yuan Shikai, having received the Qing army, simulated violent activities to suppress the rebellion for some time, but at the same time he negotiated with the Republicans. The negotiations were difficult, but the essence is simple: if you guys agree that I am the president, then we are on the way, and together we will fuck the damn empire in three days. They Shook Hands – and the Manchu Qing Dynasty, which ruled China unchallenged for three centuries, had gone. Then Shikai, however, also tried to proclaim himself emperor, but the raging Chinese overthrew him. Why overthink it? The path is already well-trodden.

A week ago, also on Friday, I wrote about how dictatorships collapse quickly and unexpectedly. But then Bashar al-Assad was still formally the head of Syria. By Sunday, the only sign left of Assad's presidency was his former prime minister, who hastened to declare that he would cooperate with the new government. And Assad himself fled to Moscow (where else?), where he will now retire, renting out his previously purchased fifteen apartments. I wonder if he will write in ads "I rent only to Slavs", as is customary in Moscow? However, let Assad go to hell, today let's talk about Wuhan. Thus, the exiled retiree and rogue general, who took advantage of the discontent of the soldiers who did not even encroach on the ruling dynasty, destroyed the empire in the blink of an eye. And now the question: how confident can Lukashenka be about the Lelchitsa Executive Committee Chair, for example? Or Pinsk? Or any of the more than hundreds of districts?

I doubt that the district leaders, and even more so some of their deputies, are tested by the special services up to X-rays of the soul. There is no guarantee that if a unit of Belarusian volunteers from the Armed Forces of Ukraine or just a crowd of peasants with edges suddenly enters the territory of the district, as in the Kursk region of Russia, the local authorities will resist. Firstly, they have no force to resist – not every district will have an assault brigade - secondly, there is no reason to resist. Each of the minor officials will certainly have a personal grudge – just like Lukashenka yells at his subordinates with a bad voice: "You will all leave here in handcuffs!" everyone knows. But the Minsk official may still get lost somewhere in the expanses of Kamennaia Horka, but the one from a district – in no way. If one was extolled at some local meeting, then it is the eternal glory of the district. And eternal resentment. Any man with a boomstick who'll say "let's go with me" can become a trigger.

However, why go far, to the border areas? Let's take a look at the capital and the metropolitans, which demonstrates devotion and a Chinese-bolvanic willingness to nod. Does Lukashenka seriously think that these are reliable people who do not have any accounts to him personally and to what they got involved in together? Imagine: there is a certain Balaba, about whose branched horns the Belarusians learned from the leak of his wife's telephone conversations with a dear friend, who is also subordinate to that Balaba. Cyber Partisans got the leak. Tell me please, can Balaba hate Cyber Partisans? Cyber Partisans – who are they? Or what? They don't have names, faces, addresses, phone numbers. This is a picture in a computer. But you can't hate the computer. Or electricity. Or a socket. But the one who forced the spouse to act so that the phone conversations of the spouse would eventually be dumped into the network by unknown hackers is easy. Or the 'Suitcase Lady' – I'm sorry, I can't remember her name anymore - how can she hate some hacker? For her, a hacker is an abstraction, the highest intelligence that revealed to her, and at the same time to all nine million people in Belarus, as her colleagues call her in telephone conversations, smoking rooms and offices. It is impossible to take revenge on abstractions. But to the one who framed her and made for the whole country a "Suitcase Lady - forest creature" of a once, perhaps, quite normal woman, - that's possible.

So, if I were Lukashenka, I would throw a grenade for security before entering any room. Then the devil knows who of those who could not withstand the constant humiliation and expectation of meanness was hiding with a weapon inside. Only 'Suitcase Lady' is worth mentioning!

Iryna Khalip, especially for Charter97.org

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