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Tony Barber

Belarus sheds the carapace of dictatorship

In Belarus it turns out that ordinary people want exactly what their counterparts elsewhere across eastern Europe wanted 31 years ago. They want to see the back of a dictator.

Tony BarberContributor

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The pro-democracy protests in Belarus touch a deep emotional chord with everyone in central and eastern Europe who recalls the largely peaceful anti-communist revolutions that swept across the region in 1989.

In their courage, dignity and hope for a better future, the vast crowds who gathered on Sunday in Minsk were little different from the demonstrators who filled Alexanderplatz in East Berlin and Prague’s Wenceslas Square in November that year.

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Financial Times

Tony Barber is Europe editor for the Financial Times.

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    Original URL: https://www.afr.com/world/europe/belarus-sheds-the-carapace-of-dictatorship-20200819-p55n4g