After rigging an election, Belarus’s regime beats protesters

OF ALL THE disturbing sounds and images streaming out of Belarus, it was the broken voice of Svetlana Tikhanovskaya that spoke loudest. If the election on August 9th had been remotely free or fair, Ms Tikhanovskaya, a former English teacher with no political experience, might now be president-elect of her country. During the campaign, she attracted vast, cheering crowds. In the few polling stations where votes were properly observed and counted, she won more than 70% of them.

But Alexander Lukashenko, the dictator who has ruled Belarus since 1994, only three years after it ceased being a Soviet republic, does not give up power easily. The official count proclaimed him the winner, with an implausible 80% of the vote. And it was his 37-year-old rival who ended up making a “concession speech”.

She had gone into the central election commission to lodge a complaint about the obviously bogus result. While inside its walls, she was apparently persuaded to change her mind. She appeared in a short video, recorded inside the commission. Seated on a sofa, her eyes lowered, she read from a piece of paper handed to her by invisible interrogators: “Dear citizens of Belarus, I, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, thank you for taking part in the presidential elections. The people of Belarus have made their choice…I ask you not to confront the...