MINSK, Belarus (AP) – More than 100,000 protesters were not easy to resign from the authoritarian president of Belarus accumulated on Sunday in a giant square in the capital and then marched through the city, holding the gigantic explosion of dissent that has shaken the country since a controversy. presidential election two weeks ago.
Sunday’s demonstration extended to Minsk’s extensive 7-hectare (17-acre) independence square. There were no official figures on the length of the crowd, however, there would be 150,000 people or more. The protesters then marched to another square about 2.5 kilometers (1 1/2 miles).
Protesters say the official effects of the August 9 9 presidential election that gave President Alexander Lukashenko a sixth term in a landslide are fraudulent. The scale and duration of the protests are unprecedented in Belarus, a former Soviet republic of nine.5 million more people that Lukashenko has ruled with an iron hand for 26 years.
A video of Belarus on Sunday showed the besavered president with a rifle and a bulletproof vest when he was fired from a helicopter that had taken him to his paintings amid the fifteenth consecutive day of protests.
When Lukashenko landed at the Independence Palace in Minsk, protesters piled up in a nearby square. The video was broadcast on the Telegram messaging app on a channel that other media has known as close to Lukashenko’s press service.
Police made no quick effort to prevent Sunday’s demonstration. Earlier this month, another 7,000 people were arrested in protests after the election, many of which were hit with sticks or rubber bullet wounds, which only infuriated ordinary residents more.
The 65-year-old leader appears to be suffering with a strategy to counter the protests. He continually blamed Western interference, claimed that the protests were supported across the United States, and accused NATO of increasing troop concentrations in Poland and Lithuania on the western border of Belarus, which the alliance denies. He also said Russian President Vladimir Putin is in a position to offer security assistance to his government to suppress protests upon request.
Lukashenko has consistently suppressed the opposition, his permanence and weariness with his extremist regime, as well as dismay at the deterioration of the country’s economy and Lukashenko’s arrogant rejection of the coronavirus pandemic, appear to have galvanized his opponents.
“Belarus has changed. Lukashenko has managed to unify everyone from intellectuality in calling for change,” said protester Slava Chirkov, who attended Sunday’s demonstration with his wife and son.
They held a sign “Lukashenko, his milk went wrong,” referring to Lukashenko’s old paintings as director of a Soviet-era collective farm.
An equally giant crowd went to a demonstration a week ago and demonstrations have taken up position since the vote. Many of the country’s major factories have been affected by protest movements through staff who have grown tired of government policies. These movements not only threaten the economy that is already suffering, but also show that opposition to Lukashenko extends beyond informed white-collar circles and even its classic base of workers.
“Are you going to paint for a dictator? Strike, that’s our response,” Sergei Dilevsky, head of the strike committee of the Minsk tractor factory, one of Belarus’s largest commercial companies, told protesters at Sunday’s demonstration.
Lukashenko’s main electoral rival, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, fled to Lithuania the day after the election. Several other challengers imaginable fled the country even before the election.
An opposition Coordination Council established last week to expand a strategy for the transition of power, however, the Belarusian government has opened a criminal investigation into its formation.
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Jim Heintz in Moscow contributed to this story