EU prepares to talk about conceivable sanctions opposing Minsk, as Russia says protests are a ‘clear attempt at open air interference’
Last modified Mon 17 August 2020 17.08 BST
The Deputy Minister of the Interior of Belarus has committed to all protesters until Friday morning, as evidence of beatings and ill-treatment by police in detention centres increases.
On Thursday night, Alexander Barsukov told the open-air journalists of the Okrestina detention centre in the capital, Minsk: “We will lose everyone at 6 a.m.”
Photographs taken outdoors from the detention centre showed detainees emerging to their friends and family waiting late on Thursday night and early Friday morning, but it is unclear whether all detainees had been released before the baruskov deadline.
At least two protesters have been killed and thousands arrested as a result of the crackdown following the disputed re-election of President Alexander Lukashenko.
His comments to tens of thousands of Belarusians who staged a wave of non-violent protests opposed to Lukashenko’s disputed re-election and a brutal police crackdown on Thursday.
On Thursday night, the government had begun talking to the protesters, some of whom had bruises and said they had been held in cells. They also complained of ill-treatment, adding beatings. One woman described being beaten, taken from her clothes and threatened to rape her.
Amnesty International said the detainees said they had been seriously threatened with rape.
“Former detainees have told us that detention centres have torture chambers, where protesters are forced to lie on the ground while police kick and beat them,” said Marie Struthers, Amnesty International’s Director for Eastern Europe and Central Asia. “They described being naked and subjected to sadistic blows as they heard the screams of other victims.”
Previously, tens of thousands more people had formed human chains in the city, many of them dressed in white and holding flowers and balloons, to protest police brutality 4 nights of riots since Sunday voting.
Protesters were carrying the symptoms “Change! And “No violence” and wore white bracelets, one of the symbols of the opposition movement.
Similar human chains have partly shaped a dozen other cities, local media reported.
Official statements advised a more conciliatory attitude in the wake of public outrage over reports of police violence, adding shootings and beatings.
Interior Minister Yuri Karayev has rarely apologized for police repression: “I take up duty and apologize for other people’s random injuries at the protests that had him in the neck,” he said.
Another presidential ally, the head of a national council of state, Natalya Kochanova, said Thursday that Lukashenko had ordered pressure of arrests.
“We’re not fighting, we don’t want war,” he said. “Tonight, more than a thousand other people were released under the legal responsibility of not participating in unauthorized events.”
The obvious replacement in the tone underlined the vulnerability of Lukashenko’s control in a country that was noted through neighboring Russia as a strategic buffer opposed to NATO and the European Union.
European countries condemned police violence and the EU should talk about sanctions imaginable on Friday.
Earlier, EU ambassadors layed flowers at the site of a protester in Minsk as a crowd cheered and sang.
“We are here to mourn the loss of life and also to show our solidarity with the victims of the violence and abuse that have taken place in many Belarusian cities in recent days,” EU envoy Dirk Schuebel told the press.
The EU has lifted sanctions imposed for Lukashenko’s human rights record in 2016. Germany called on the EU to put pressure on Lukashenko.
Several of those arrested in recent days reported widespread beatings and abuses in detention centres. In the early hours of Thursday, the government showed that a young man had died in police custody, the time of death since the protests began.
Alexander Vikhor, 25, arrested Sunday in the town of Gomel in southeastern Belarus. Video footage shows police shooting passers-by with rubber bullets and beating protesters with batons after their arrest.
Detainees said they were being held in overcrowded cells with inadequate food and water. The Interior Ministry said it had arrested 6,700 others in protests since Sunday.
Lukashenko’s war-going parties accuse him of manipulating the elections to defeat his main rival, opposition candidate Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who left the country for neighbouring Lithuania.
The Constitutional Court has so far published 569 names of other persons sentenced to brief criminal sentences, 15 days.
Russia’s foreign ministry said Thursday that the protests showed “clear attempts at outdoor interference.” But the leaders of Poland’s neighbours and the Baltic countries suggested to Lukashenko that it “immediately end the use of force against his people.”
Lukashenko has ruled Belarus since 1994 and for many years has maintained a vital foundation for its idiosyncratic form of autocracy, which was encouraged through certain Soviet collective traditions that pleased through the modelling director of the collective farm. The 65-year-old man has faced growing anger at his management of the coronavirus pandemic, which he has described as “psychosis,” a slow economy and human rights.
Prominent Belarusians condemned the violence and suggested Lukashenko resign.
Belarusian Svetlana Alexievich, winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature, spoke of her surprise at the “inhuman and satanic” movements of the insurrectional police and suggested Lukashenko leave peacefully.