Lukashenko: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

[Music] our main story tonight concerns belarus and i know you might be expecting me to play that game where i tell you that's not actually belarus it's somewhere else but here's the thing that game was supposed to encourage you to learn some basic geography and honestly i started to get the sense that some of you just grew to enjoy being humiliated by it which is why those particular people will be happy to know that that's not actually belarus that's belarus happy now you're freaks specifically we'd like to talk about belarus's president and autocratic leader alexander lukashenko who has had quite a year in fact you might have noticed stories about belarus popping up with increasing regularity especially since last august when they had a highly contested election which made international headlines thousands of people unleashing their fury in the capital city of minx and elsewhere also around the country mr lukashenko who has ruled for nearly three decades has faced a wave of anger over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic and the economy as well despite that official state approved exit polls gave him an overwhelming majority of 80 percent it's true they claimed lukashenko won with 80 of the vote which was immediately fishy for a couple of reasons one the massive protest that followed and two the idea that any man could still be popular after nearly three decades in the public eye i've only had this show for eight years and even i can barely stand the sight of me and belarusians aren't just furious at lukashenko for his handling of the coronavirus although from the beginning of the pandemic his mismanagement of it was incredibly reckless at first he called the virus a psychosis and said it was treatable with vodka and saunas and at a crowded hockey game he denied its existence i don't understand there are no viruses here did you see any of them flying around oh yeah yeah that makes sense doesn't it just look around you you don't see any covet viruses do you do you hear any ebola smell any measles taste any aids in the air no of course not that's how you know they're not here what is here is your fearless leader who's about to go and score a hat-trick for the mint midlife crisis but lukashenka's terrible handling of covid is just the beginning here he's described himself as the last and only dictator in europe which is in itself just an amazing thing to say bragging about being the last dictator he's like bragging about being the last radio shack or the last person to make a movie with harvey weinstein it's not an enviable title and sadly for some belarusians he's the only leader they've ever known how old are you i am 22. you're 22. yeah so your whole life you've lived under one president how does that feel for you well it feels like yeah yeah i bet it does especially since the person who's been in charge for that man's entire life is a hard-boiled egg with a mustache who calls himself a dictator and thinks covid only exists if you can see it zooming around in a tiny little jet that process was from last september and things have only escalated since then you may remember a belarusian athlete refusing to return home during the tokyo olympics and back in may this happened this morning belarus is facing growing international protests and condemnation after the country's president alexander lukashenko sent a fighter jet to ground a commercial plane flying between two european capitals and with it 26 year old dissident journalist roman protest and his girlfriend one passenger says roman pleaded don't do this they'll kill me the ryanair crew replied we have no choice yeah a journalist who was critical of the government briefly passed through belarusian airspace on a commercial flight so lukashenko personally ordered a fighter jet to intercept it and force it to land now belarusian authorities originally claimed that they did that because of an emailed bomb threat from hamas but records show that email was sent 24 minutes after they informed the pilot about the bomb threat not to mention it was sent from ahmed yolanov 1988 at protonmail.com with the subject line allahu akbar which is just impossibly lazy it's just one step above emailing from badguy6969 yahoo.com with a subject line terrorist stuff parentheses like 911. so given how much things seem to be spiraling in belarus we thought tonight it'll be worth giving you some context for what is happening over there and taking a look at exactly who alexander lukashenko is and let's start with the fact that he is the greatest president in the history of belarus specifically because he's the only president in the history of belarus lukashenko won the country's first free and fair election in 1994 three years after the fall of the soviet union when he a former manager of a state-owned farm vowed to raise taxes on the rich and defeat corruption it sounded great and he was genuinely popular at the time just listen to a former aids turned critic recall how people reacted to lukashenko at his rallies 3 000 people who were listening to him instead of leaving the stadium move towards him like an avalanche i remember as if it happened yesterday they were reaching out to him like believers to a relic praying for god's grace women were lifting up their children for lukashenko to touch them others were reaching out with books newspapers or even banknotes just to get his autograph well lukashenko was no michael jackson but this is what really happened well well hold on there because was he no michael jackson think about it lukashenko was immensely popular in the 90s die hard fans packed stadiums to see him and eventually torpedoed his reputation because it turns out he was an absolute monster to be honest i think lukashenko fully earned that comparison and he still very much plays up his humble farm background through photo ops like this one where he's harvesting potatoes while dressed like chef boyardee at an orgy he once gave four bags of potatoes and the tub of lard to vladimir putin as a christmas gift and when steven seagal visited belarus lukashenko also gifted him produce with the washington post poetically writing at the time there was no hesitation on steve seagal's face as he took a raw freshly peeled carrots from the hands of the belarusian president alexander lukashenko and bit into it with a satisfying chomp which is just an elegant tapestry of words you don't even need a video to imagine what it was like to see steven seagal using his mouth bones to break off the tip of that rabbit hot dog but you know what we're going to show it to you anyway [Applause] magnificent look no disrespect no disrespect to cigar classics like under siege hard to kill above the law and probably something called hunting the fire or whatever but that is the greatest film steven seagal has ever made but for all lukashenko's common man posturing his promises to combat corruption quickly fell apart just five months into his presidency a deputy compiled an investigation into corruption in parliament which was said to have contained charges against various high-ranking officials but the government banned all press coverage of the report to the point where local newspapers that have planned to publish the results of it instead ended up publishing blank pages like these and that was just the beginning of a decades-long assault on the press shortly afterward lukashenko replaced the editors in chief of four leading newspapers and took the national radio and television under strict control creating an environment so hostile to independent journalism belarus is now considered the most dangerous country in europe for members of the media with members constantly subjected to violence arbitrary detentions interrogations raids and more and the control lukashenka exerts over even small petty details is incredible is it true that you cannot film the back of lukashenka's head yes it's true it's because he's has a bold patch or yeah it's a kind of very weird uh haircut so it's growing from one side wait a minute wait a minute hold on there you're telling me this guy is bald this guy this guy this man right here you're telling me that this guy is bald bald you say you know what i think you might actually be right he looks like he kind of grew his left sideburn into a rat tail and then chillaxed it onto his bare scalp the answer to the question is lukashenko bald at this point it's a resounding oh i wish but lukashenka's bizarre behavior goes well beyond censoring the media and force-feeding stephen cigar or vegetables over the years he's made statements like better to be a dictator than gay and not everything connected in germany with the well-known adolf hitler was bad really taking the phrase playing devil's advocate a bit too literally and if you're thinking okay but who didn't accidentally praise hitler in the 90s first why are you thinking that and second just this summer he said the entire world grovels to the jews which is obviously awful lukashenko treats anti-semitism the way fashion treats low-rise bell-bottoms he keeps bringing it back even when it was never acceptable at any point in history overall it seems lukashenko operates from the standard authoritarian playbook and he's repeatedly worked to codify his power using a controversial referendum in 1996 to extend his first term and dramatically increase his powers and weaken those of the legislature and then using a second referendum to completely remove term limits in 2004 at this point outside observer groups have reported that none of his last five election victories have been legitimate and throughout his time as president lukashenk has clamped down hard on the slightest signs of descent in 2012 two men staged toy protests with stuffed animals holding auntie lukashenko slogans objectively the cutest display of civil disobedience that i've ever seen but that wound up getting both of those men sentenced to 10 days in jail a sentence that in itself actually inspired a follow-up protest in july hundreds of teddy bears rained down on belarus they wore parachutes and carried pro-democracy messages the man behind the prank is a marketing executive with a swedish firm he took off from lithuania in this tiny plane for 90 minutes he let the fur fly perfect i love it 10 out of 10 there we should be dropping parachuting teddy bears from the sky here all the time not even as an active protest it should just be a thing that we do oh it's 1 p.m everyone it's daily parachuting teddy bear time why did we even invent planes if we're not going to use them to drop teddy bears out of the sky and instantly improve everybody's day i don't understand the society we've built for ourselves we are idiots now look unsurprisingly lukashenko tried to cover that incident up which proved to be impossible due to you know the existence of the internet so instead he tried to save face by firing two generals the head of the border service and the head of the air force but the thing is even though protests like those can be whimsical what happens to distance in belarus is absolutely horrific opposition figures have disappeared over the years and some are suspected to have been murdered by the state and there have been numerous allegations of political detainees being tortured as this bbc journalist once tried to demonstrate in what i will say is a pretty bold manner the opposition in belarus say they were tortured by being forced to strip naked in freezing conditions so we go to a cold store in north london where the temperature is minus 24 celsius so the guards forced the prisoners to strip naked and stand in this position spread eagles and -20 there was snow outside in the jargon of torture this is a stress position [Applause] quick question and it actually has a nothing to do with the prisoner torture why did you do that you could have just told us the prisoners were forced to stand in the cold naked we'd have believed you and we'd been able to imagine what that looks like we really didn't need to see you standing there cakes out to get your very basic point [Applause] and the thing is that brutality has only escalated recently lukashenka has increased the number of arrests of human rights activists and journalists and police have raided their offices and homes just this week an opposition leader was sentenced by the state to 11 years in prison and even when dissidents managed to escape belarus they may not be safe a few weeks ago an activist who'd fled to ukraine went out for a run and was found hanged in a park and while that has not yet been officially confirmed as a murder come on i'm not sure which species of trees are native to ukraine but i don't think any of them naturally have belarusian dissidents hanging from them the point here is for nearly three decades now belarus has experienced a brutal cycle of oppression in which lukashenko wins elections that are neither free nor fair locks up his political opponents people take to the streets in protest and he violently cracks down it is no wonder the belarusian people seem to have had enough a leaked poll showed that only about a third of the population trusts lukashenko which is impressively low considering remember he controls the national media and even there his grip seems to be slipping though last year presenters on a state tv morning show walked off and resigned leaving viewers watching this [Music] wow that is that is both a brave act of protest by belarusian broadcasters and also everyone's dream panel on the view and and you do you do get the sense lukashenko may be starting to feel some pressure here because when marches likened him to a cockroach and online polls showed him having only three percent support from his people instead of simply ignoring that this is how he responded to the editor do you really believe that the serving president has just three percent support stop harassing and insulting us calling me a mustache cockroach etc i am still the president of this country in no country in the world are you allowed to insult people uh yes you are yeah yeah you definitely are here i'll prove it to you your suit's too big you're suck at hockey and whatever it is you do with your hair isn't working see not not in jail i'm not in jail so look things are clearly bleak in belarus and svetlana ticonofsky the woman widely believed to be the real winner of last year's election and who by the way only ran after her husband lukashenka's initial opponent was imprisoned has fled the country but she is still leading the country's pro-democracy movement from exile she's asked world leaders to demand the release of what is thought to be over 650 political prisoners and i will say the eu the u.s the uk and canada have imposed sanctions on belarus targeting everything from close associates of lukashenko to the belarusian economy and the boyd administration has just recently imposed more but the truth is sanctions can only do so much here and lukashenka does not seem keen to end his reign in fact many think that he's groomed his youngest son collier to take his place because since he was young lukashenka has been dragging him along everywhere he goes on state business here he is here he is again here he's again he's in all of these photos i don't know exactly when european bring your kid to work day is but it can't be always so at this point it looks like the only thing that will really improve things in belarus is if the people there somehow managed to reform their constitution and ensure that free and fair elections are finally held and as we have seen tonight fighting for those changes is going to be incredibly risky but there may be one extremely small way that we can actually help here or if not help at least annoy the out of lukashenko because if there is one thing that we know he hates other than gay people jews his old bald head and anyone who disagrees with him it is teddy bears and frankly why wouldn't he i mean look at them there everything that he's not cute lovable and covered in thick natural hair all the way around so we actually decided to make our own special teddy bear in his honor as you can see he's uh wearing a shirt with farmer lukashenka's favorite vegetables in a totally random configuration if you think they look like something else what does that say about you and and instead of dropping them from a plane over belarus we're actually offering them to you at this website belarusbearforce.com for the price of 19.99 we've partnered with global giving to give a hundred percent of sales to organizations fighting for the freedom of the press and human rights for the people of belarus so please buy one of these bears and not just for the people of belarus but for my sake too we bought 10 000 of these things and if we don't get rid of all of them i'm in real go to belarusbearforce.com buy one for yourself your parents your least politically informed co-worker or your friend's new baby who you have no idea what to get because it's not like you've ever hung out with it before so be sure to order your teddy bear today and support the people of belarus i promise you they are flight ready that is our show thank you so much for watching it's great to be back good night you

Channel: LastWeekTonight

Views: 2,881,270

Rating: 4.9147182 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: 27FpoRiStgk

Length: 18min 41sec (1121 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 12 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/elimars]

I saw the thumbnail but I knew what I would be in for if I clicked so I said fuck that. After his episode on Xinjiang and his smearing of Venezuela, why would any socialist give this imperialist mouthpiece extra views?

[u/wholelotofit2]

When NATO bombed Yugoslavia Lukashenko was the only one to send help and to come personally. I will forever have respect for him for that alone. Belarus was strong during transitional period unlike many Eastern European countries. These chickens can just quack on their national TV and be bitches that they are.

[u/Hopeful_Race7288]

Just 3 minutes in and he's already called fucking known nazi scumbag Roman Protasevich a "journalist". Fucking hellworld, every time this shit show airs an episode I have to re-radicalize my friends...

[u/KeyYogurtcloset9564]

Absolutely fucking hate this guy

[u/KameradZaka]

john olibshit

[u/nukajm]

Project Mockingbird in full effect

[u/dirtbagbigboss]

Who’s going to do the response video?

[u/sweetb0y]

Maybe these unfunny freaks can do an episode on Ukraine sometime.

[u/REEEEEvolution]

Saw the thumbnail, remembered this sniefling necon rat existing, remmebered his bullshit about Venezuela an China and called it a day.