What are the odds of being physically harmed, arrested, or killed while participating in mass protests under an authoritarian regime?
Evidence quality 4.63/5
Eight-dimension review score against the quality rubric . Each dimension scored 1–5.
- D1 Source grounding
- 5/5
- D2 Source authority
- 5/5
- D3 Arithmetic
- 4/5
- D4 Uncertainty
- 4/5
- D5 Scope
- 5/5
- D6 Prose
- 5/5
- D7 Perception honesty
- 4/5
- D8 Caveat completeness
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Lifetime probability · lifetime, subgroup
1 in 12
8.3% lifetime chance
Most people underestimate this.
range 1 in 50 to 1 in 4.0
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≈ As likely as
Perceived
Most people in democratic countries imagine protest as a low-risk civic act, anchored by experience with police-escorted marches, permit-based demonstrations, and a right-to-assemble legal framework. When people imagine protesting under an authoritarian government, they tend to imagine either total safety (the regime will not dare crack down publicly) or certain death (any protest is crushed immediately). The documented reality sits in an uncomfortable middle: serious enforcement actions are common, killing is selective but real, and mass detention affects a large fraction of participants during sustained crackdowns. No systematic survey measures the perceived risk of protest participation under authoritarianism; this estimate is based on editorial assessment of how the documented figures compare to common intuitions.
Rough estimate: most people significantly underestimate the arrest rate; deaths are less common than feared but more common than zero
Source: editorial intuition, not polled
Actual
~25,000 arrested out of ~300,000 estimated cumulative participants (Belarus 2020); ~8.3% arrested per protest campaign
People who participated in the Belarus 2020 mass protests against the Lukashenko government
Show derivation
Reference event: the Belarus 2020 post-election protest movement, August-December 2020. Human Rights Watch documented that by mid-November 2020, Belarusian authorities had detained a total of more than 25,000 people since early August. The peak single-rally attendance was approximately 200,000 people (August 16 in Minsk); multiple major rallies drew 100,000+. The cumulative number of unique individuals who participated across the August-December protest cycle is not precisely documented, but given that at least 4 distinct 100,000-200,000 person rallies occurred in Minsk alone plus many regional demonstrations, a conservative estimate of ~300,000 unique participants is used as the denominator. This yields an arrest-per-participant rate of 25,000 / 300,000 = 8.3%, or roughly 1 in 12 people arrested across the full campaign. Deaths during the same period: at least 4 people died as a direct result of police actions (HRW World Report 2021). Death rate: 4 / 300,000 = ~0.0013% per campaign, or approximately 1 in 75,000. The 8.3% figure is used as the headline because detention/arrest/beatings was the dominant harm; deaths, while real, were not the primary form of enforcement. Iran 2022 comparison for calibration: ~551 killed + ~19,262 arrested out of a participant base estimated in the hundreds of thousands across 26 provinces and 134 cities, consistent with a comparable or higher arrest rate and a materially higher killing rate per participant. The scope is declared as subgroup_lifetime because this is a per-campaign risk for active protest participants, not a general US-adult population probability. It is not directly comparable to the population-lifetime figures elsewhere on this site.
Caveats: The 8.3% headline is specific to Belarus 2020 and should not be treated as a uni…
The 8.3% headline is specific to Belarus 2020 and should not be treated as a universal constant for authoritarian protest repression. Crackdown intensity varies dramatically by regime, movement size, international scrutiny, and domestic political calculus. Belarus 2020 involved a relatively restrained killing rate but aggressive mass detention. Iran 2022 involved both mass detention and a materially higher killing rate. Russia 2022-2023 anti-war protests involved rapid arrests but fewer reported killings. China 2022 (the "A4 paper" or "blank paper" movement) was suppressed largely through pre-emptive surveillance and spot detentions rather than mass crackdowns. The denominator (unique participants) is the largest source of uncertainty: it is never precisely counted in authoritarian settings. The 8.3% figure is an arrest-focused estimate; the probability of any physical harm (assault, beating, injury during detention) is higher than 8.3% because documented torture and mistreatment affected hundreds of those arrested. The risk of death ranges from near-zero (Belarus) to 0.1-0.5% (Iran 2022) depending on the specific regime and event. This estimate applies to active protest participants, not to bystanders or people arrested pre-emptively.
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During the 2020 protests in Belarus, more than 25,000 people were detained across roughly four months of demonstrations — out of an estimated 300,000 or more unique participants, yielding a campaign-level arrest probability of approximately 1 in 12. At least four people were killed by police actions during the same period. Human Rights Watch documented that hundreds of those arrested were subjected to systematic beatings or torture in detention facilities. The risk of arrest was not a fringe outcome for participants: it was common enough that Belarusian authorities routinely arrested more than 1,000 people in a single weekend.
The Iran 2022 Mahsa Amini protests provide a second data point with a strikingly different killing rate. United Nations documentation recorded at least 551 deaths across 26 of 31 Iranian provinces, along with approximately 19,262 arrests in at least 134 cities and universities. With protests spread across a population of roughly 87 million and drawing participants across multiple months, the arrest rate per active participant is comparable to Belarus; the killing rate is materially higher, on the order of 0.1 to 0.5 percent of active protesters depending on denominator assumptions. Both cases make clear that the risk distribution is not uniform: mass detention is the baseline tool, lethal force is selective but real, and the probability of either outcome is far from negligible for people who attend multiple large demonstrations.
Several factors shape where on this range a specific protest campaign falls. Regime type matters: governments that face significant international economic ties and visa dependencies (like Belarus in 2020) have historically exercised more restraint on lethal force than more isolated regimes (like Iran in 2022). Movement size creates a partial shield: mass arrests of 200,000-person crowds are logistically impractical, so the arrest rate per participant tends to decline as protests grow very large. Timing matters too: initial crackdowns in the first days of a movement are typically the most violent, before authorities shift to selective prosecution of organizers and visible leaders. None of these factors eliminate the risk; they redistribute it across the participant population.
Claim ledger
Every number below is what each source reported, with the verbatim quote we relied on and how we arrived at our figure. Click any link to verify directly.
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[1] Human Rights Watch — World Report 2021: Belarus
World Report 2021: Belarus- Statistic
By mid-November 2020, authorities had detained a total of more than 25,000 people since early August; at least four protesters died as a result of police actions- Excerpt
“"By mid-November, authorities had detained a total of 25,000 since early August. At least four protesters died as a result of police actions." ”
- Source data from
- 2021-01-13
- Accessed
- 2026-05-09 · archived copy
- Calculation
- HRW's World Report 2021 provides the cumulative 25,000 detentions figure for August-November 2020, sourced from Viasna Human Rights Centre monitoring. Dividing 25,000 detentions by an estimated 300,000 unique campaign participants (conservative, based on documented peak rallies of 200,000 on August 16 and multiple 100,000+ rallies nationwide) yields ~8.3% arrested per campaign. Death rate: 4 / 300,000 ≈ 0.0013%. The uncertainty band (2%-25%) reflects the unobserved denominator: if unique participants were closer to 500,000, the arrest rate falls to ~5%; if closer to 100,000, it rises to ~25%.
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[2] Human Rights Watch — Belarus: Systematic Beatings, Torture of Protesters
Belarus: Systematic Beatings, Torture of Protesters- Statistic
Belarusian security forces arbitrarily detained thousands of people and systematically subjected hundreds to torture and other ill-treatment in the days following the August 9, 2020 presidential election- Excerpt
“"Belarusian security forces arbitrarily detained thousands of people and systematically subjected hundreds to torture and other ill-treatment in the days following the August 9, 2020 presidential election." ”
- Source data from
- 2020-09-15
- Accessed
- 2026-05-09 · archived copy
- Calculation
- HRW's September 2020 report documents that hundreds of detainees were subjected to torture or ill-treatment, meaning that among those arrested, a substantial fraction experienced serious physical harm beyond simple detention. This is distinct from the raw arrest count: arrest probability ~8.3%; conditional probability of serious abuse given arrest was "hundreds" out of the ~7,000+ arrested in the initial August crackdown, or at minimum ~5-10% of detainees.
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[3] UN News — Iran: Repression continues two years after nationwide protests
Iran: Repression continues two years after nationwide protests- Statistic
At least 551 people killed by the Iranian government during the 2022-2023 Mahsa Amini protests, including 68 minors; approximately 19,262 arrested in at least 134 cities- Excerpt
“"551 deaths, at least 49 women and 68 children occurred across 26 out of the 31 provinces of Iran. The International Fact-Finding Mission gathered over 27,000 items of evidence and conducted 134 in-depth interviews with victims and witnesses." ”
- Source data from
- 2024-03-15
- Accessed
- 2026-05-09 · archived copy
- Calculation
- The Iran 2022 data provides a second empirical anchor for the same type of risk: sustained mass protests under an authoritarian government. With protests across 26 of 31 provinces and 134 cities, and 19,262 documented arrests, the arrest scale is consistent with the Belarus case. The killing rate was higher in Iran: 551 deaths vs. estimated hundreds of thousands of participants implies a death rate on the order of 0.1-0.5% per campaign for active participants, materially higher than the Belarus figure of ~0.001%. This wide killing-rate range (Belarus ~0.001%, Iran ~0.1-0.5%) drives the high end of the uncertainty band and explains why the scope is framed as "per campaign in an authoritarian crackdown" rather than "per democratic protest".