Islands of democracy

Universities in Belarus are nurturing a democratic awakening, but authoritarian interference makes helping them hard

“When you want to go outside you first check on the balcony whether there are people near the entrance of the building,” says Sasha Kuzmich. “You never know when someone will call at your door and it will mean you are detained.” 

Kuzmich is one of the thousands of students, university staff and other citizens who have faced violence and career ruin for protesting Belarus’s widely discredited August presidential election. A former international secretary for the Belarusian Students’ Association, she now works for an adult education charity based in the country’s capital, Minsk.