The leader of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, who stole the country’s 2020 presidential election, is descending to new depths of repression. In the past, he jailed journalists, shuttered their outfits, closed their websites and crushed most nongovernmental organizations. This month, a police unit announced that people will be charged with crimes for what they see or subscribe to online, especially the encrypted Telegram channels. The government published new rules for handling “extremist” information to take effect Oct. 15, but the document did not spell out specific penalties. What Mr. Lukashenko’s regime calls “extremist” is largely opposition information, news and reports about his brutality. “You can be arrested for just reading it, or making a comment somewhere,” says Tatsiana Khomich, the opposition’s coordinator for political prisoners, whose sister, Maria Kolesnikova, is a jailed opposition leader. Both sisters worked for a Minsk banker, Viktor Babariko, a presidential aspirant detained before the vote, who’s also still behind bars.
In recent years, Belarus had a thriving community of tech workers — coders, programmers and the like. On Sept. 28, the Belarus KGB raided the Minsk apartment of Andrey Zeltsar, 31, who worked for a U.S.-based tech company, Epam Systems. A shootout followed in which Mr. Zeltsar and a KGB officer, Dzmitry Fedasiuk, were killed. Details are not clear, but friends say Mr. Zeltsar was supportive of the pro-democracy demonstrations of the past year. In the days after the incident, social media in Belarus erupted with commentary about the case. Mr. Lukashenko’s regime began rounding up people for their postings.
