Neighborhood Telegram chats as a driver of local activism and a leap in civic consciousness despite excessive state surveillance in Belarus

The rigged presidential elections in Belarus in 2020, accompanied with the disproportionate police brutality and dismissal of the COVID-19 pandemic as a “psychosis”, served as a catalyst for the drastic changes in Belarusian society. A number of initiatives have been launched to address the burning issues, provide support to those in need and protect the most vulnerable groups

One of the projects that has emerged from the Permen hub is the initiative Dze.chat, an interactive map showing courtyard Telegram chats that became epicenters of civic engagement, and focal points of solidarity against the autocratic regime. Aimed to bring people together, it was created to help them restore their suppressed dignity,overcome learned helplessness and mistrust.The local activists have organized neighborhood tea-parties, film screenings and theatrical performances, concerts, spontaneous demonstrations, and flash mobs.

In fact, such chats bridged the generational gap between the older, middle-aged and younger residents of the apartments. Back then their communication was inconsistent and brief, while later they were given a platform to discuss their frustrations and concerns regarding the political situation and translate their political demands into action. The sense of national identity has re-emerged and fueled the need for the new symbols: neighborhood flags were created based on the white-red-white one, which simultaneously reinforced the common identity of the whole protest movement and stressed out the local character of each district. Leaflets, protest songs have become an integral part of the courtyard movement.

Multiple attempts have been taken by the regime to handle disobedience and suppress the efforts of citizens to come together and unite. Labeling anti-governmental channels as extremist ones with the imprisonment of the members for the subscription, detentions of chat administrators, arrests of musicians performing the music and neighbors having a tea-party in the courtyards.Some rebellious neighborhoods were punished by cutting off their water supply and by sending in groups of special forces. Despite the pressure, the courtyard movement remained the stronghold of street protest activity.

The safety protocols have been designed to provide the users with the best practices on how to keep their communications out of reach of the government and to hide their identities. For instance, the importance of setting two-factor authentication was stressed out, while at the same time users were encouraged to provide limited information about themselves in channels that are not fully encrypted as secret chats. Moreover, the users were encouraged to clear the cache and chat history, remove metadata from the files and images before sending them to the channels and secure the connection to the channels via VPN services to hide the direction of the traffic from the authorities. The enhanced measures were widely associated with the cumbersome procedures that decreased usability and the majority of users were reluctant to take extra steps to hide their identities and ensure the secure connection. While the general recommendation of refraining from personal information disclosure and being cautious about the information shared in chats has fueled the sense of mistrust within the community. Therefore, some basic measures were not taken into consideration resulting in making the data more vulnerable to the police’s seizures.

Moreover, the great majority of users were endangered by sending critical comments with the respect of illegimate regime, triggered by the illegal actions associated with tortures and beatings by police officers.Thus, with the safety concerns in mind, the chat administrators were forced to restrict the freedom of expression and switch off the comment function to reduce the number of criminal charges being initiated with the respect of the members.

The number of threats has facilitated the resilience within the community: at first, the board of administrators was set up to prevent the identities of the other members being revealed once someone from them is arrested. However, what has been considered as the most efficient practice - moderating and running the channels while residing abroad.

Mentioned above threats coupled with the multiple arrests of the founders and chat members have forced the founders of dze.chat initiative to remove the local neighborhood chats from the map. However, the alternative solution aimed to facilitate community building has been proposed in connection with the mass departure from Belarus, especially after the outbreak of the war in Ukraine: the network of chats where Belarusian diaspora is located has been introduced.90 cities in 30 countries, including Australia, the United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, Italy, Lithuania, New Zealand, Poland, the United States, France, and South Korea. Its role and functions have gradually evolved from symbolic support to active participation in, for instance, crowdfunding initiatives related to providing assistance to the growing number of refugees, political prisoners and their families that were forced to leave the country under the threat of detention.

However, despite that tens of thousands Belarusians have fled the country, the rest of the society still tend to sympathize with the democratic movement, therefore, require even more support, especially in the face of the unprecedented number of false narratives fabricated by the state propaganda.To combat the spread of misinformation and promote the independent reporting via receiving information directly from primary sources the dze.news platform was recently launched - the reliable and secure way to access the news without subscribing to the channel. While at the same time, a number of initiatives have been announced there that provide the local communities with a chance to still make a difference via small but meaningful acts of kindness (for instance, the call for writing letters from the Santa Claus to the children of political prisoners, to renovate the entrance halls and playgrounds, help socially vulnerable citizens and solve local issues with the state's support).

What does the future hold for the forms and properties of the community, how it could be reimagined? Mapping the plausible futures within a current deep uncertainty in the international area is challenging enough. However, there is a small chance that the setting up of resilient democratic institutions will take place in the near future mostly due to the fact that civil society lacks the experience and skills to successfully translate their political demands into action, while the attempts that had been executed before were faced with the unprecedented resistance from the authorities. Nevertheless, the acute social tension will eventually spur pro-democratic change in Belarus and the new structures,aimed to facilitate community building based on the decentralized digital communication infrastructure, are supposed to be established.