MINSK, Belarus – Authorities released at least 2,000 other people detained amid protests in Belarus after a debatable presidential election, while on Friday seeking to curb growing public anger over the brutal police crackdown on nonviolent protests and Western sanctions.
Many of the freed spoke of brutal beatings and other abuse by the police, and some had bruises on their bodies. Some cried as they kissed the parents they were waiting for.
Protesters have taken to the streets since Sunday’s elections, in which It was reported that President Alexander Lukashenko won 80% of the vote to make his 26-year authoritarian government larger in Belarus.
Protests continued on Friday as thousands of people piled up across the country and Lukashenko’s main rival Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who fled to neighboring Lithuania on Tuesday, released a video challenging the effects of voting and it is not easy for the government to start a discussion. with the protesters.
EU foreign ministers will meet to discuss the imaginable sanctions opposing Belarus.
Nearly 7,000 others have been arrested and many injured since Sunday when police dispersed fiercely in large part non-violent protests with crippling grenades, tear gas, rubber bullets and violent beatings. At least one user killed.
Thousands of factories that once shaped the core of Lukashenko’s base joined the protests, denouncing police crackdown and not easy a new election, raising the prospect of a national unemployment.
“Our entire shop voted against Lukashenko and then we suddenly learned that he won by a landslide,” 42-year-old assembly worker Dmitry Glukhovsky said outside the Minsk Automobile Plant, or MAZ. “They not only have cheated us but also beaten us up, and no one is going to accept that.”
He said his meeting workshop went on strike on Friday to call for a new election. More than 1,000 were seen in the factory yard, shouting “on the ground!” Asking for Lukashenko’s resignation.
Another factory worker, Viktor Konovalov, a 45-year-old electrician, said a friend had been arrested for repression.
“People probably wouldn’t forgive him, ” he said. “We don’t want your apologies, we want a new election and a new government.
At the Minsk tractor factory, or MTZ, about 1,000 employees also gathered to ask for Lukashenko’s resignation and marched to the government headquarters. When they reached the center of the capital, the crowd grew and others cheered and motorists honked their horns in support.
Workers also piled up in many giant factories in an unprecedented challenge to Lukashenko, which has been in force since 1994 and has earned the nickname “Europe’s last dictator” for his relentless crackdown on dissent.
Clearly nervous, the Belarusian leader warned Friday that the measures would exacerbate the damage inflicted by the coronavirus pandemic and could lead To Belarus losing its position in global markets.
“Everyone is fighting for markets, and if we stop, we can never resume production,” he said. “You have to do it with people.”
She did not face the elections and demonstrations, however, Natalya Kochanova, president of the upper office of parliament, said Thursday night that more than 1,000 detainees had been released that day after Lukashenko’s order to law enforcement to take a closer look at the arrests. .
“We don’t want a war, we don’t want a fight,” Kochanova said in televised statements.
Valiantsin Stefanovich, of the Viasna Rights Centre, showed that around 1,000 more people had been released from the Minsk and Zhodino prisons.
“The government is obviously looking to defuse the stage and ease tensions, fearing that the furious commercial will take to the streets of all of Belarus,” Stefanovich said.
The Interior Ministry later said that 2,000 detainees had been released and others would be released.
After a violent crackdown, police subsidized on Thursday as thousands of people formed “lines of solidarity” in Minsk and other cities. The women, many of whom wore white and carried flowers and portraits of detained detainees, led human chains as motorists honked their horns in support. The government did not interfere with Friday’s protests.
Dozens of police veterans posted videos of them throwing their uniforms away.
Protests have spread even though the demonstration lacks leaders. Tsikhanouskaya suggested to her supporters to avoid protests in an earlier video which, according to her affiliates, had been recorded under pressure from law enforcement while she was still in Minsk. The 37-year-old ex-husband had joined the race to catch up with her husband, an opposition blogger who has been in jail since May.
In her new video released friday, Tsikhanouskaya again contested the election results, stating that copies of the protocols in the voting constituencies show it between 60% and 70%. She suggested that the government end the violence and interact in the discussion with the protesters.
“Belarusians will never need to do it under existing government,” he said. “The government has turned nonviolent protests into a bloodbath.”
He also announced the creation of a coordinating council to help ensure a “peaceful transition of power.”
A protester was killed in Minsk on Monday when, according to the Ministry of the Interior, an explosive device that attempted to throw the police exploded in his hand. The media disputed the ministry’s accusation, saying he had been killed by the police. The place where he died was temporarily remodeled in a sanctuary, with a lot of people, adding European ambassadors, laying flowers there.
Authorities also said that a detainee had died in the town of Gomel in the southeast of the country, but that the cases were unclear.
The brutal crackdown on protests has generated grievances in the West.
Before the EU’s assembly of foreign ministers to discuss sanctions against Belarusian officials guilty of the crackdown, German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert said in Berlin that nonviolent protests “reflect the discontent, anger and despair” of other Belarusians and that the crackdown “totally unacceptable.”
In an attempt to appease Western critics, Belarusian Chancellor Vladimir Makei said in a phone call with his Swiss counterpart that the country is in a position to engage in a “constructive and objective dialogue” with foreign partners on all the problems similar to the elections and upcoming events.
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Associated Press writers Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow and Frank Jordans in Berlin contributed.