2020–2021 Belarusian protests

The 2020–2021 Belarusian protests were a series of mass political demonstrations and protests against the Belarusian government and President Alexander Lukashenko. The largest anti-government protests in the history of Belarus, the demonstrations began in the lead-up to and during the 2020 presidential election, in which Lukashenko sought his sixth term in office. In response to the demonstrations, a number of relatively small pro-government rallies were held.

The protests intensified nationwide after the official election results were announced on the night of 9 August, in which Lukashenko was declared the winner. Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the main opponent of Lukashenko, rejected the results as falsified and claimed instead to have received 60–70% of the votes. On 14 August, she announced the creation of the Coordination Council, with membership applications open to all Belarusians who agreed that the official election had been falsified.

On 23 September, Belarusian state media announced that Lukashenko had been inaugurated for another five-year term in a brief ceremony which was held privately. The following day, the EU published a statement that rejected the legitimacy of the election, called for new elections, and condemned the repression and violence against the protesters.

The protesters faced violent persecution by the authorities. A statement by the United Nations Human Rights Office on 1 September cited more than 450 documented cases of torture and ill-treatment of detainees, as well as reports of sexual abuse and rape. At the end of 2020, the Viasna Human Rights Centre documented 1,000 testimonies of torture victims.