Sound Familiar?

Back in December 2010 Belarus in eastern Europe held it's Presidential election. Although international election monitors were not permitted to observe the vote it was said to be carried out amid a culture of intimidation and fear with one of the candidates, Uladzimir Niaklajeu being so badly beaten on his way to a campaign rally that he was hospitalised for several months.

When the incumbent strongman President, Alexander Lukashenko was re-elected with 79.67% of the vote while his closest challenger, Andrei Sannikau received only 2.43% there were widespread accusations of vote rigging. These quickly led to protests which led to riots which led to a government crackdown that saw Internet sites like Facebook, Google, YouTube, Twitter etc being blocked and opposition TV stations being raided by state security and forced off the air. Although exact figures are hard to come by around 700 people including 7 Presidential candidates were arrested and are currently working their way through the Belarusian court system with some facing sentences of up to 15 years in prison. At one point Uladzimir Nikajeu was kidnapped from his hospital bed by masked men and I'm not sure if he's yet been released.

Today (11/4/11) a bomb exploded at a railway station in Minsk, the Belarusian capital killing at least seven. With not a great deal of information to go on it appears that one of two things has happened. Either the opposition to Lukashenko carried out the bombing in order to draw attention to their cause. This would be a major change in tactics because their previous attempts have been along the lines of writing to the pop star Shakira. Alternatively Lukashenko carried out the bombing as a false flag attack in order to justify a further crackdown on the opposition. This seems more likely and would tally with attacks on government buildings that took place on election day which were widely blamed on agent provocateurs. However I really do need more information before I can call it definitively one way or another.

Going off topic slightly I should point out that between my last post and Jacob Zuma's absence from the African Union (AU) visit to Benghazi some people may have got the mistaken impression that South Africa was only supporting the idea to reduce AU support for the NATO attacks on Libya. They weren't. Like the USA South Africa will support any attempts to bring a ceasefire to Libya because if it doesn't happen it kind of looks like they f*cked up by voting for resolution 1973(2011). It's just a shame the situation in Libya spoke for itself.