Month: January 2025

Belarus (TIP): The smiling face of President Alexander Lukashenko gazed out from campaign posters across Belarus on January 26 as the country held an orchestrated election virtually guaranteed to give the 70-year-old autocrat yet another term on top of his three decades in power.
“Needed!” the posters proclaim beneath a photo of Lukashenko, his hands clasped together. The phrase is what groups of voters responded in campaign videos after supposedly being asked if they wanted him to serve again.
But his opponents, many of whom are imprisoned or exiled abroad by his unrelenting crackdown on dissent and free speech, would disagree. They call the election a sham—much like the last one in 2020 that triggered months of protests that were unprecedented in the history of the country of 9 million people.
The crackdown saw more than 65,000 arrests, with thousands beaten, bringing condemnation and sanctions from the West. His iron-fisted rule since 1994—Lukashenko took office two years after the demise of the Soviet Union—earned him the nickname of “Europe’s Last Dictator,” relying on subsidies and political support from close ally Russia.
He let Moscow use his territory to invade Ukraine in 2022 and even hosts some of Russia’s tactical nuclear weapons, but he still campaigned with the slogan, “Peace and security,” arguing he has saved Belarus from being drawn into war.
“It’s better to have a dictatorship like in Belarus than a democracy like Ukraine,” Lukashenko said in his characteristic bluntness.
His reliance on support from Russian President Vladimir Putin—himself in office for a quarter-century—helped him survive the 2020 protests.
Observers believe Lukashenko feared a repeat of those mass demonstrations amid economic troubles and the fighting in Ukraine, and so scheduled the vote in January, when few would want to fill the streets again, rather than in August. He faces only token opposition.
“The trauma of the 2020 protests was so deep that Lukashenko this time decided not to take risks and opted for the most reliable option when balloting looks more like a special operation to retain power than an election,” Belarusian political analyst Valery Karbalevich said.
Lukashenko repeatedly declared that he wasn’t clinging to power and would “quietly and calmly hand it over to the new generation.”
His 20-year-old son, Nikolai, traveled the country, giving interviews, signing autographs and playing piano at campaign events. His father hasn’t mentioned his health, even though he was seen having difficulty walking and occasionally spoke in a hoarse voice. (AP)

SEOUL (TIP): South Korean prosecutors on January 26 indicted impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol on rebellion in connection with his short-lived imposition of martial law, news reports said, a criminal charges that could put him to death or jail for life if convicted.
This is the latest blow to Yoon, who was impeached and arrested over his Dec. 3 martial law decree that plunged the country into huge political turmoil. Separate from criminal judicial proceedings, the Constitutional Court is now deliberating whether to formally dismiss Yoon as president or reinstate him.
South Korean media outlets, including Yonhap news agency, reported that the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office indicted Yoon over rebellion. Calls to the prosecutors’ office and Yoon’s lawyers went unanswered.
Yoon, a conservative, has steadfastly denied any wrongdoing, calling his martial law a legitimate act of governance meant to raise public awareness of the danger of the liberal-controlled National Assembly which obstructed his agenda and impeached top officials.
During his announcement of martial law, Yoon called the assembly “a den of criminals” and vowed to eliminate “shameless North Korea followers and anti-state forces.”
After declaring martial law on Dec. 3, Yoon sent troops and police officers to the assembly, but enough lawmakers still managed to enter an assembly chamber to vote down Yoon’s decree unanimously, forcing his Cabinet to lift it.
The martial law imposition, the first of its kind in South Korea in more than 40 years, lasted only six hours. However, it evoked painful memories of past dictatorial rules in the 1960s-80s when military-backed rulers used martial laws and emergency decrees to suppress opponents.
South Korea’s constitution gives the president the power to declare martial law to keep order in wartime and other comparable emergency states, but many experts say the country wasn’t under such conditions when Yoon declared martial law.
Yoon insists he had no intentions of disrupting assembly work including its floor vote on his decree and that the dispatch of troops and police forces was meant to maintain order. But commanders of military units sent to the assembly have told assembly hearings or investigators that Yoon ordered them to drag out lawmakers. (AP)

MOSCOW (TIP): Russian President Vladimir Putin on January 27 praised Soviet soldiers for ending the “total evil” of Auschwitz on the 80th anniversary of the Red Army’s liberation of the Nazi death camp. Auschwitz was the largest of the extermination camps and has become a symbol of Nazi Germany’s genocide of six million European Jews, one million of whom died at the site between 1940 and 1945, along with more than 100,000 non-Jews.
Soviet troops found 7,000 survivors when they arrived on January 27, 1945. “We will always remember that it was the Soviet soldier who crushed this terrible, total evil and won the victory, the greatness of which will forever remain in world history,” Putin said, according to the Kremlin. (AFP)

JOHANNESBURG (TIP): Four more South African soldiers have been killed in fighting against the M23 armed group in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, the defence force said January 28, after nine were killed last week.
Three soldiers were killed in fighting near Goma airport on Monday and another died after being wounded in an earlier battle, the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) said in a statement.
“The M23 rebels launched… a mortar bomb in the direction of Goma Airport, which landed in the SANDF base, and this resulted in the SANDF losing three members.
“Furthermore, the SANDF is also saddened to announce that one of our members who was injured during the battle with M23 rebels over the past three days later succumbed to injuries.”
The SANDF announced on Saturday that nine South African soldiers, including two from the UN peacekeeping force MONUSCO, were killed in clashes with M23 forces on Friday.
South Africa has also deployed troops to a regional force sent by the Southern African Development Community.
Fighting has raged in Goma despite calls from the international community for the Rwandan-backed M23 to halt its advance on the city which is in a mineral-rich part of the vast DRC and is home to more than a million people. There were conflicting accounts over how much of Goma remained under Congolese control after the M23 group and Rwandan soldiers entered the city centre on Sunday night. “The SANDF remains fully committed to its peacekeeping responsibilities under the United Nations Stabilisation Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUSCO) and SADC Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (SAMIDRC),” its statement said. (AFP)