Belarus: Market Traders Disagree on Political Involvement

Tobias Ljungvall reports ^[1] on a conflict between members of Perspektiva, an organization uniting Belarusian market traders: “This organisation was created on a wave of successfully organised strikes among market traders, in which tens of thousands or perhaps even more than a hundred thousand of them had temporarily closed down their businesses in protest against the regime's policies. The market traders, engaging in small-scale imports from neighbouring countries and not-so-neighbouring countries (as Turkey for instance) and selling their goods at wide outdoor areas packed with their stands, had arose as the only politically active group in Belarusian society.”