Police arrested more than 1,000 people in Belarus in recent protests opposed to the effects of the country’s presidential election, officials said Wednesday.
The demonstrations took place in 25 Belarusian cities on Tuesday and until the evening, Interior Ministry spokeswoman Olga Chemodanova told The Associated Press. Thousands of others demonstrated in the minsk capital and several other cities for 3 nights to challenge the election results.
The Central Electoral Commission reported that President Alexander Lukashenko won a sixth term in Sunday’s elections with 80% of the vote. The main opposition candidate, Svetlana Tikhanouskaya, who had attracted large crowds on election occasions when the electorate expressed frustration with the 26-year government of authoritarian Lukashenko, won 10%.
Police deployed to disperse post-election protests used batons, stun grenades and rubber bullets. One protester was killed on Monday amid a crackdown in Minsk and dozens of wounded.
Belarus’s human rights organization Viasna said many others were afraid to seek medical help, fearing being prosecuted at the protests.
“We have data that the workers’ medical corps is required to report all injuries and injuries to the police, and doctors do not see the protesters as victims, but as enemies of Belarus’s stability,” Viasna’s lawyer Pavel Sapelko said.
Earlier this week, the BelarusIan Research Committee presented an unscrupulous investigation into mass unrest. Some 3,000 more people were arrested after Sunday’s protests and 2,000 more after demonstrations that began late Monday night and lasted until the end of the night.
Belarusian news firm Belta reported Wednesday that police had arrested “mass coordinators” in the capital, Minsk. The detainees allegedly “managed hundreds” of protesters and were charged with paying them to take part in the riots, Belta said.
About 30 hounds are among those arrested, the Belarusian Journalists’ Association said Wednesday. Three have already been sentenced to between 10 and 15 days of administrative arrest and another 25 remain in detention, pending court appearance.
OBSERVING Disputed protests elections in Belarus:
During Tuesday night’s protests, hounds from various Belarusian and foreign media outlets were beaten. Officers confiscated memorabilia cards from a photographer’s organization, and added one for The Associated Press, while taking photographs of police repression.
“A planned search for hounds with independent Belarusian and foreign media has begun,” said Boris Goretsky, vice president of the hounds’ association.
Lukashenko, who has had the country with an iron hand since 1994, mocked the political opposition as a “sheep” manipulated through foreign masters and promised to continue to adopt a business stance opposed to the protests.
Tikhanouskaya, 37, a former English instructor who entered the race after her husband’s imprisonment in Belarus, left the country for Lithuania on Tuesday in a brutal change of meaning, hours after publicly challenging the effects of the vote and filing a formal request for a recount. . His crusade said he acted out of coercion.
His departure from Minsk deterred protesters from taking to the streets. Several told AP that rallies would continue.
On Wednesday, nearly two hundred women marched through central Minsk in solidarity with the injured protesters, shouting “Honte!” and bring flowers.
“We are in favour of a non-violent demonstration,” Ksenia Ilyashevich, a 23-year-old computer specialist, told AP.
“We showed courage and went out to unite. Hundreds and thousands of Belarusians stand in solidarity with us, but they’re afraid [to pass out]. We’re here for everyone.”
This week’s police movements have generated complaints from the European Union and the United States.
Events in Belarus will be on the calendar of a pressing assembly of EU foreign ministers on Friday, the EU’s foreign leader, Josep Borrell, tweeted.
The assembly was convened a day after Borrell said that the 27-nation bloc would review its relations with Belarus and whether it would take “measures against those guilty of the violence observed, improper arrests and falsification of election results.”
In 2016, the EU lifted the top of the sanctions it imposed on Belarus in 2004 after Lukashenko, once dubbed “Europe’s last dictator in the West,” freed political prisoners and allowed protests.
Meanwhile, Lithuania, Poland and Latvia are in a position to mediate between the Belarusian government and the opposition, Lithuanian President Gypsy Nauseda said Wednesday.
First, Nauseda said, the Belarusian government will have to end the violence that opposes the protesters, free the detained protesters and form a national council with members of civil society to seek a way out of the crisis.
“If our initiative is met in a negative way, of course, the others will remain on the table, and those are sanctions, either at European or national level,” Nauseda told journalists in Vilnius, Lithuania.
Public Relations, CBC P.O. Box 500 Station A Toronto, ON Canada, M5W 1E6
Toll-free number (Canada only): 1-866-306-4636
TTY Editor / Teletype: 1-866-220-6045
The priority of CBC/Radio-Canada is to create a service available to all Canadians, adding other people with visual, hearing, motor and cognitive impairments.
The encoded subtitles and video described are available for many CBC systems transmitted by CBC Gem.