Commentary: Even in the US, freedom of assembly is under threat

In early September, a small group of women dressed in white and red protested in Minsk. They risked detainment, imprisonment and even torture in Alexander Lukashenko’s Belarus simply for gathering publicly in the colors of the 1918 flag of the Belarusian People’s Republic, a symbol of the current pro-democracy opposition movement. They covered their faces (also in red and white) to protect their identities from surveillance.

During the past year more than 650 political prisoners have been confined in Belarus, among them