Six years ago, on 1 September 2020, on the first day of the academic year, instead of ceremonial assemblies more than a thousand students took to the streets of Minsk — by various estimates from about 1,500 to several thousand. University columns walked along Independence Avenue toward Victory Square and on to the Education Ministry and Independence Square. Dictator Aliaksandr Lukashenka answered as usual: OMON, plainclothes officers, police vans.

Knowledge Day as a day of resistance

After the falsified election of 9 August and three Sunday marches, students became a distinct force in the protest. On 1 September they left lecture halls with white-red-white flags, placards and demands: Lukashenka’s resignation, freedom for political prisoners, new fair elections.

Correspondents wrote of columns “from almost every major state university.” Students tried to break through cordons toward the centre, gathered near stadiums and campuses, blocked university entrances. In some places teachers stood in human chains beside them.

OMON against the lecture halls

Security forces broke the route to the Education Ministry, pulled people from columns, beat them and dragged them into vans. A BBC crew filmed OMON attacking students near one of the central squares. Some young people hid in campus buildings — police followed them inside.

The human rights centre Viasna by evening reported dozens detained: students, journalists, at least one lecturer. Later the Interior Ministry named 128 detentions nationwide that day, about 95 in Minsk, including more than 30 students. Some were released; others were held for court.

Evening on Independence Square

Those not grabbed during the day came out again in the evening — to Independence Square by the House of Government. Hundreds of people, flags, chants. Officers selectively “packed” people at the edges of the square. That is how the academic year began under Lukashenka: not with a bell — with a protocol.

Why it still matters

1 September 2020 showed that the regime fears not only Sunday marches of hundreds of thousands, but weekdays — when youth refuse to play at “normality.” Expulsions, short jail terms, criminal cases and pressure on university administrations followed. Yet that student Knowledge Day remains a symbol that the 2020 protest was not “a few loners,” but a generation.