Lessons From The Protests In Paris And Baku For Belarus

• 13.10.2026, 16:16

How Nonviolent Resistance Works.

A reader of the "Basta!" Telegram channel compared protests in Azerbaijan and France to what happened in Minsk six years ago.

“I’m watching what is happening right now in Paris, Baku, and Berlin, and I’m reminded of 2020 in Belarus,” he writes. “It’s a great pity that many of those we were counting on back then had absolutely no knowledge of either the history of resistance in our country or the basics of peaceful protest around the world.

Let me emphasize—I’m talking specifically about peaceful protest and the methods and tools it entails: boycotts, occupying buildings, refusing to cooperate, solidarity and mutual support, and protecting one’s supporters.

Ordinary high school students showed us how to fight. A strike combined with turning “their own” buildings into strongholds of resistance. They simply occupy schools—places they know well, where they’re familiar with every nook and cranny—and refuse to leave. This isn’t a new idea; it happened in the U.S. in the first half of the last century, and in France and Poland in the second half. Workers or students stop performing their duties but refuse to leave their workplaces or the premises of the enterprise or university. It’s practically impossible to “get” them out of there.

Something similar happened for a couple of days in September 2020 at some universities in Minsk. I’m writing about this because I participated—I remember it. The idea of expanding the strike was shelved back then because Tikhanovskaya’s campaign headquarters flatly refused to meet us halfway and call on all educational institutions to join it. Not only that, but initiatives to hold an “occupation strike” were quashed by mysterious “activists” who convinced us that it was all over, that we had “almost won,” and that there was no need to do anything.

The year 2020 taught us a lot, including how to distinguish true leaders from fake amateurs. Azerbaijani and French schoolchildren taught us how to effectively use all the possibilities of nonviolent resistance. I believe this experience will soon come in handy in Belarus.”