KYIV, Ukraine (AP) – Belarus’s authoritarian leader on Thursday reorganized his most sensible government lieutenants in an obvious attempt to take office amid weeks of protests that pushed him to resign after 26 years in office.
President Alexander Lukashenko promoted Valery Vakulchik, who ran the State Security Agency, which still carries the Soviet-era KGB call, to the post of secretary of the Presidential Security Council, and replaced Vakulchik with Ivan Tertel, who was once head of the KGB. State Control Committee.
Lukashenko has been the subject of protests challenging his re-election for a sixth term. Opponents say the Election of August 9 in which he won 80% of the vote was manipulated. AP hounds spoke to election officials in several places that explained what the vote had been like. been manipulated.
Observers saw Thursday’s appointments as an attempt by the president to further tighten the 9. 5 million euro Eastern European country he has led with an iron hand for 26 years.
“This is a component of a transparent trend towards strengthening the police state,” said Alexander Klaskousky, an independent political analyst in Minsk. “Repressions will intensify. “
In the early days of the post-election protests, police arrested some 7,000 more people and beat up a lot of them, provoking foreign outrage and causing increased protests against the government. Since then, the government has replaced its tactics and tried to avoid threat demonstrations, selective detention of protesters, and persecution of activists. Some strikers claim to have been threatened with losing chores.
The Home Office said that 24 other people were arrested Wednesday for participating in unauthorized protests and may obtain fines or criminal sentences of up to 15 days if convicted.
Belarusian prosecutors addressed protest leaders and opened a criminal investigation into the Coordination Council that opposition activists established after elections to verify and negotiate a power transition. Two of its members were sentenced to 10 days in prison for organizing unauthorized protests last week. and a Minsk court handed them new sentences of 15 days on Thursday.
“Sounds like a mockery. The government has stopped paying the law,” said Valiantsin Stefanovich of the Viasna Human Rights Center in Belarus.
Another councillor arrested this week for tax evasion faces up to seven years if convicted.
While trying to quell dissent, the government also revoked the accreditation of many Belarusian hounds and expelled some foreign hounds, adding two Moscow-based Associated Press hounds. In addition, Belarusian JOURNALISTS of the Palestinian Authority were informed that their press references had been revoked.
Several Belarusian hounds were arrested this week and charged with participating in unauthorized demonstrations. On Wednesday night, police arrested two popular television presenters who gave up state television in solidarity with the protesters.
Some 50 independent hounds demonstrated thursday night outdoors at the headquarters of the internal ministry in Minsk, calling for the release of the detained hounds.
The United States and the European Union criticized the presidential election of 9 August for being neither lax nor fair and suggested that the Belarusian government interact in the discussion with the opposition, an application rejected through Lukashenko.
Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven on his country’s proposals to facilitate discussion between the Belarusian government and the opposition said the offer was made because Sweden will assume the presidency of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe next year.
“We thought it was a concept to propose an organization that Belarus is a member of as a dialogue forum,” he said. “That was the offer. It’s open. But, of course, it is up to Belarus to make the decision. “. “
Lukashenko sought power from Russia, which has a treaty of union with Belarus with close political, economic and military ties. Russian President Vladimir Putin says he is in a position to send policemen to Belarus at Lukashenko’s request if protests turn violent.
On Thursday, Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin visited the Belarusian capital to discuss situations for Belarus to refinance a Russian loan. At an assembly with Lukashenko, Mishustin noted progress in strengthening the union agreement between the two countries.
In a political gesture for Russia as it confronts Western critics over the alleged poisoning of Putin’s critic Alexei Navalny, Lukashenko said Belarusian intelligence had heard a phone call purportingly claiming that poisoning was a sham.
Navalny is being treated in Germany, where doctors say the evidence has indicated that the dissident was poisoned with a Soviet-era nerve agent, Novichok. Chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday called Navalny’s poisoning an assassination attempt to silence one of Putin’s fiercest critics and called for a thorough investigation.
“We intercepted an appeal call, which obviously proved to be a forgery,” Lukashenko said, adding that the verbal exchange referred to other people in Warsaw and Berlin whom he did not mention. “There was no Navalny poisoning. “
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Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow contributed to this report.
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Follow AP on the political crisis in Belarus in https://apnews. com/Belarus