‘Sometimes The Most Powerful Protest Is Silence’

Belarusians did not give the regime a single chance.

A reader of the Charter97.org website explained why he decided to ignore the so-called “elections” on January 26:

“Can you call something an election if the result has long been predetermined? If the vote of each of us is just a decoration for legitimizing the power of one person? I did not go to these “elections”, and here's why.

When a system is built on lies and crimes, playing by its rules becomes complicity in these crimes. We all know perfectly well that ballots will be rigged, protocols will be rewritten, and votes will be stolen. We saw this in 2020, when thousands of people took to the streets to say “no” to falsifications. We saw how they were met with batons, prisons, and tear gas. We remember how our country became a battlefield for the truth.

Going to the “elections” today means playing by rules that were not written for us. It means admitting that we supposedly have a choice when we don’t. It means giving the system what it so desperately wants: the appearance of legitimacy. But now it is clear that Belarusians did not want to be part of this show.

The calls of some supposedly opposition figures who tried to persuade us to “turn in” to the dictator sounded especially cynical. They said that participating in the “elections” is a way to “show a civic position.” But Belarusians turned out to be smarter. We understand that turnout in such a system is not a protest, but a gift to the regime. It is not a fight, but a capitulation.

Belarusians did not go to vote. We did not play this game. We did not give the regime a single extra chance to present its falsifications as the “will of the people.” We showed that our choice is not a choice between bad and worse, but a refusal to participate in a farce. Sometimes the most powerful protest is silence.

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