Belarusian opposition

[3] Supporters of the movement tend to call for a parliamentary democracy based on a Western model, with freedom of speech and political and religious pluralism.

[citation needed] The modern Belarusian democracy movement originated in the late 1980s when Mikhail Gorbachev's Perestroika and the Chernobyl disaster exposed the serious shortcomings of the Soviet system and galvanized a significant section of Belarusians around the issues of environment, de-Stalinization, national revival and democratic change.

[5] On 3 June 1988 the Minsk-based weekly "Litaratura i mastatstva" ("Literature And Art") published an article by archeologists Zianon Pazniak and Yauhen Shmyhalyou about the unearthing of 500 mass graves of Stalinist victims in Kurapaty on the outskirts of the Belarusian capital.

[6] On 30 October 1988, riot police in Minsk violently dispersed a mass demonstration to commemorate the victims of Stalinism at Kurapaty – the first of many such clashes in modern Belarusian history.

Falling living standards and unemployment along with Glasnost and Perestroika policies also sparked massive demonstrations and unrest by mostly young people, demanding democracy and leading labour protests across Belarus.

The document – whose title deliberately echoes the Czechoslovak human rights declaration Charter 77 twenty years earlier – was created on the anniversary of the referendum held in 1996, and which, in the words of the organization, declares "devotion to the principles of independence, freedom and democracy, respect to the human rights, solidarity with everybody, who stands for elimination of dictatorial regime and restoration of democracy in Belarus."

[18] On 25 March, opposition leader Vladimir Nekliayev, who was set to speak at the main protest, was allegedly stopped in the morning on his way to Minsk.

[21] The government defended the mass arrests and beatings against citizens by alleging that the police had found "petrol bombs and arms-laden cars" near a protest in Minsk.

[23] Mass protests erupted across Belarus following the 2020 Belarusian presidential election which was marred by allegations of widespread electoral fraud.

Protests emerged from the Belarusian opposition condemning Lukashenko's support and involvement with the Russian invasion of Ukraine on 27 February 2022, shortly after the war's beginning.