MINSK (Reuters) – Belarus on Thursday filed a criminal process opposed to a new opposition framework, accusing him of an illegal take-off, a day after President Alexander Lukashenko threatened to sweep the streets of protesters who rejected his re-election.
Belarus is facing its biggest political crisis since the disintegration of the Soviet Union, with tens of thousands of demonstrators who rejected Lukashenko’s victory in an August 9 vote that his wary parties say were manipulated.
Lukashenko’s opponents, who have been in force for 26 years, released the Coordination Council on Tuesday with the stated objective of negotiating a force.
Its dozens of members come with the Nobel Prize winner and the overthrown leader of Minsk’s main drama theatre, as well as exiled presidential candidate Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, whose supporters say she won the election.
The attorney general described the framework as designed to capture force and endanger it for national security, Russian news firm RIA reported.No American has been identified as a suspect in this case.
The council said one of its members, Maksim Znak, had been summoned to appear before the Criminal Investigation Committee on Friday and said his efforts were legal.
“The rate is absolutely unfounded and unfounded. Our purpose is to achieve a crisis without conflict.We are not asking for the take-off of power,” Syarhei Dyleuski, a board member and head of a striker committee at the Minsk tractor factory, told Reuters.
SWITCHED SIDES
After days of mass demonstrations that attracted tens of thousands of protesters, protests were reduced on Thursday but interrupted.
Lukashenko announced wednesday that he had ordered police to leave the streets of the capital blank, that no action was taken against the large number of protesters who conducted an outdoor demonstration at police headquarters later that day.no sign of a decisive security operation.
In a video message, one of the opposition leaders, Maria Kolesnikova, asked members of the security forces to refuse to obey “illegal orders” and promised judicial immunity if they “attacked the people.”
Outside the Janka Kupala National Theatre, which has been the center of rallies since its director was fired for supporting the protests and the entire cast of actors resigned, an organization of folk singers joined through a small crowd singing.
“Now no one can just sit quietly, at home, practice chaos and watch them kill our others,” said musician Sergei Dolgushayev.
Higher concentrations are expected this weekend.
OPPOSITION CANDIDATE
Tsikhanouskaya, a 37-year-old political novice, became the opposition consensus candidate after the participation of better-known figures was banned, adding that her husband, an activist imprisoned since May.
Since the vote, he has fled to neighbouring Lithuania, posting videos in which he asks his followers to stand peacefully.Lithuanian Prime Minister Saulius Skvernelis met with her on Thursday in his in Vilnius.
He assured her that the government, along with its partners in Poland, Latvia and Estonia, will do and do everything possible to ensure that there are free and fair elections in Belarus, and that their youth can embrace their father in the giant as soon as possible.”, he wrote on Facebook.
This led to a barely veiled rebuke by the Kremlin, which said Moscow would make any contact between foreign officials and the Belarusian opposition an interference in Belarusian affairs.
The crisis in Belarus, Russia’s most unyielding neighbor, is a brake on the Kremlin, which will have to check whether it should control a forceful move or stay with Lukashenko, a gruff former head of a Soviet-era collective farm.
It also poses a challenge for Western leaders, of violence six years after a popular uprising in neighboring Ukraine provoked russian army intervention and triggered Europe’s deadliest conflict.
The EU rejected Lukashenko’s re-election and EU summit chair Charles Michel met with President Vladimir Putin on Thursday, the most recent of several phone calls between Putin and EU leaders this week. He said Putin had told Michel that pressure on Lukashenko would be counterproductive. .
Of all Russia’s former Soviet neighbors, Belarus has the closest political, economic and cultural appointments with Moscow, and its heavily fortified borders with Latvia, Lithuania and Poland are NATO’s borders.
(Additional report via Vladimir Kostin in Minsk; written through Peter Graff; edited through Frances Kerry)
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