People power in the face of state violence in Belarus

Nadzeya Husakouskaya is a regional researcher at Amnesty International, Eastern Europe and Central Asia Regional Office, and a scholar. As an Amnesty researcher, Husakouskaya has investigated gender-based violence against women in conflict-affected Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Husakouskaya received her doctorate from the University of Bergen. She is a Belarussian who lives and works in London.

Alena Minchenia is a social scientist and gender scholar at Lund University specialising in nonviolence and civil resistance in eastern Europe. Minchenia’s research focuses on the protests in Belarus and examines how emotions shape and feature in activists’ narratives about changes, democracy, Europe and its values, and Belarus as ‘the last dictatorship’.

Nataliya Gumenyuk is a prominent Ukrainian journalist specialising in foreign affairs and conflict reporting. In 2015-2019 Gumenyuk headed the independent broadcaster Hromadske TV. She made her mark as a foreign correspondent, reporting on major political events from nearly 50 countries. Millions tuned in to watch her coverage of the Euromaidan protests and the Russian-Ukrainian war. Gumenyuk has been reporting from Minsk over the last few weeks.

Elena Korosteleva is Professor of International Politics, Jean Monnet Chair of European Politics, and Director of the Global Europe Centre at the University of Kent. She is also the Principal Investigator for the Global Challenges COMPASS project (ES/P010849/1, 2017-21, £4mln) supported by the British government, to build global partnerships with Belarus, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Her latest monograph focused on ‘Resilience in EU and International Institutions’ (forthcoming, October 2020), for which the advanced online version is available here.