As the rest of Europe shuts up shop to combat the new coronavirus, Belarus remains resolutely open for business.
Restaurants in the former Soviet Republic continue to serve food, and the country’s football league plays on.
Despite being at the door of a Europe grappling with the deadly COVID-19, life goes on here more or less unchecked.
The Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko has dismissed the global health crisis as a “psychosis”, and refuses to follow the example of much of the globe by imposing a lockdown.
With less than 100 positive cases and no deaths in Belarus, Lukashenko this week suggested “there shouldn’t be any panic” over the virus.
He encouraged his citizens to work on the land.
“There, the tractor will heal everyone. The fields heal everyone,” suggested the straight-talking former collective farm director who assumed power in 1994.
On Saturday at an ice hockey gala match he went further, saying that “it was better to die a dignified death than live on your knees”.
And so, in stark contrast to all the leagues elsewhere on the European continent, the Belarus championship, like the country’s tractors, ploughs on, undeterred.
Saturday’s upset win by home side Mozyr over the country’s top team BATE Borisov was watched by several thousand fans, and screened live on Russian television.
In the capital, FK Minsk’s humble ground was half full for the derby against Dinamo, fans behind both goals ending the game shirtless.
One fan, Igor, 33, told AFP: “Even if we’ve turned up here, we try to self-isolate, we came by car, we wash our hands 10 times.”
He expressed concern at the complacency displayed by some of his fellow supporters.
“It’s as if they aren’t aware of anything, they go here and there, they’re laughing.”
– Thermal cameras –
Special measures have been put in place nonetheless including thermal cameras to check the temperature of fans as they enter stadia which are disinfected twice a day.
Those precautions satisfied another fan, Ludmila, a 55-year-old school teacher who said that “people who are ill won’t be here”.
“We’ve taken all the measures recommended by the Sports Ministry. All those who are in contact with fans… are supplied with gloves,” Belarus football federation spokesman Alexsandr Aleinik told AFP. (AFP)
