Global Voices starts a GV Insights series of virtual conversations on burning issues, starting on the 14th of December at 3pm UTC/GMT with the first event “Belarus 2020: Still Uploading?”—a lively discussion on the 2020 Belarusian revolution with experts from Belarus and the region and members of the Global Voices community. The event will be live-streamed on Zoom and Facebook Live.
Following the August 9 presidential elections, Belarusian society fractured along political lines, with one faction supporting Alyaksandr Lukashenka, who has held power in the country since 1994, and the other supporting main opposition candidate Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya as the country’s de facto president-elect.
The ongoing revolution in the country has played out in the form of unprecedented street demonstrations, strong mobilisation by women, and a new level of online coordination by activists, as well as extreme state violence, including disappearances, death, rape, torture and the imprisonment of thousands.
Maryia Sadouvskaya-Komlach, a media analyst and journalist from Belarus and Team Lead for Eurasia at Free Press Unlimited in the Netherlands; Rufina Bezlova, a Prague-based artist from Belarus whose embroidered artworks have become some of the most recognizable icons of the Belarusian protests; Gregory Asmolov, a scholar in the fields of digital entrepreneurship, marketing and crisis communication will share their opinions with the public.
The event will be moderated by Maxim Edwards, Global Voices Russia and Eurasia editor, and Filip Noubel, Global Voices’ Managing Editor.
The full announcement can be seen here.
The event is free and open to the public and will be streamed live on Zoom at https://us02web.zoom.us/s/89146898846, and Facebook Live at https://www.facebook.com/globalvoicesonline. Viewers will have the opportunity to comment and pose questions to the speakers. The session will be in English. Register here to receive a reminder about the meeting.
