MINSK (Reuters) – Belarusian leaders began releasing thousands of detainees and issued a rare public apology thursday in an effort to quell national street protests that pose the greatest challenge to the strongman’s 26-year reign, President Alexander Lukashenko.
Hundreds of friends and family, many of them crying, stood outside a detention center in Minsk, hoping to give food, water and blankets to others emerging from the inside in the early hours of Friday.
Some of the protesters had bruises and described being locked in cells and complaining of abuse. Home Deputy Minister Alexander Barsukov denied that the prisoners had been mistreated and said all detainees would be released in the morning.
At least two protesters were killed and about 6,700 arrested this week as part of a crackdown following Lukashenko’s disputed re-election that led the West to new sanctions opposed to Minsk.
The detainees’ opinion and the emollient tone used through two senior state officials underlined the vulnerability of Lukashenko’s control over a country that neighbouring Russia perceived as a strategic buffer opposed to NATO and the European Union.
“I take the duty and apologize for other people’s random injuries in the protests that had him on his neck,” Internal Affairs Minister Yuri Karayev said.
Tens of thousands of protesters joined Thursday through some of the public industries that are proud of Lukashenko’s Soviet-style business model, adding the Minsk Automobile Factory (MAZ), which manufactures trucks and buses.
The images were shown singing “choices” and “forward.” Local media also reported protests against the state manufacturer of transport and land movement devices BelAZ in the city northeast of Minsk and at the Grodno Azot chemical plant.
The protesters formed human chains and marched through the capital, supported by at least 10 television presenters and strictly controlled state media announcers who resigned in solidarity.
Protesters accuse Lukashenko of manipulating last Sunday’s presidential election to win a sixth term. The president, alleging a foreign-backed plot to destabilize the country, dismissed the protesters as criminals and the unemployed.
But the presidential ally, the head of a national council of state, Natalya Kochanova, said Thursday that Lukashenko had ordered an urgent review of the arrests.
“We’re fighting, we want war,” he said.
In Minsk, EU ambassadors layed flowers at the site of a protester’s death as the crowd clapped and sang.
“We are here to mourn the loss of life and also to show our solidarity with those who suffer the violence and abuse that have occurred in many Belarusian cities in recent days,” EU envoy Dirk Schuebel told the press.
Lukashenko sought more with the West amid tense ties with Russia’s classic ally.
The EU partially lifted the sanctions imposed due to Lukashenko’s human rights record in 2016, but it is possible to introduce new measures from this month. Germany called on the EU to put pressure on Lukashenko.
Russia, which has led Lukashenko to settle for closer political and economic ties, expressed fear for what he described as attempts through external forces to destabilize Belarus.
A former director of the Soviet collective farm, Lukashenko, 65, is growing in anger at his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, which he has described as “psychosis,” a slow economy and human rights.
Sergei, one of the detainees released, said there were 28 other people on a mobile phone involving five. The prisoners took turns falling asleep, he said, and were given a singles bread bar in percentage for two days.
Reuters can independently find out his story.
“They didn’t hit me on my cell phone, they pulled me off my cell phone and there they beat me,” Sergei said, who refused to give his last name.
Reporting through Andrei Makhovsky and Vasily Fedosenko in Minsk; Additional reports through Anton Zverev and Andrey Ostroukh in Moscow and Gabriela Baczynska in Brussels; Writing through Matthias Williams; Editing through Alex Richardson, Giles Elgood, Grant McCool and Michael Perry
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