Zoom link to join webinar directly: https://us02web.zoom.us/s/89146898846

Join Global Voices on December 14 at 3pm UTC/GMT for the first in our GV Insights series of virtual conversations: “Belarus 2020: Still Uploading?”—a lively discussion on the 2020 Belarusian revolution with experts from Belarus and the region and members of the Global Voices community. The event will be live-streamed on Zoom and Facebook Live.

Following the August 9 presidential elections, Belarusian society fractured along political lines, with one faction supporting Alyaksandr Lukashenka, who has held power in the country since 1994, and the other supporting main opposition candidate Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya as the country's de facto president-elect. 

The ongoing revolution in the country has played out in the form of unprecedented street demonstrations, strong mobilisation by women, and a new level of online coordination by activists, as well as extreme state violence, including disappearances, death, rape, torture and the imprisonment of thousands. 

To review and explain the events of the past four months we have invited:

• Maryia Sadouvskaya-Komlach, a media analyst and journalist from Belarus and Team Lead for Eurasia at Free Press Unlimited in the Netherlands. Mariya, who holds a Master's in Political Journalism from Columbia University, is also a non-resident fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA)
• Rufina Bezlova, a Prague-based artist from Belarus whose embroidered artworks have become some of the most recognizable icons of the Belarusian protests
• Gregory Asmolov, a scholar in the fields of digital entrepreneurship, marketing and crisis communication with a particular interest in the way that digital entrepreneurship can contribute to social resilience and address various types of crisis. Gregory, a former Global Voices editor, has lived and studied in Russia, Israel and the UK, where he obtained a PhD from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).

The event will be moderated by Maxim Edwards, Global Voices Russia and Eurasia editor, and Filip Noubel, Global Voices’ Managing Editor, both of whom have covered the events and interviewed key actors and witnesses to the revolution.

The event is free and open to the public and will be streamed live on Zoom at https://us02web.zoom.us/s/89146898846, and Facebook Live at https://www.facebook.com/globalvoicesonline.  Viewers will have the opportunity to comment and pose questions to the speakers. The session will be in English. Register here to receive a reminder about the meeting.

We look forward to having you join us on Monday, December 14 at 15:00 UTC (click here to convert to your local time zone)!