Riot police clashed with protesters in the Belarusian capital yesterday, forcing demonstrators back and hitting several with truncheons. Four explosions were heard, apparently percussion grenades set off by police.
Many protesters were detained, including one of the opposition leaders, Alexander Kozulin, Russian news agencies reported, but the main opposition leader, Alexander Milinkevich, denied media reports that he himself was detained.
Kozulin and Milinkevich had been leading days of rallies against what they called electoral fraud.
Earlier yesterday, Milinkevich addressed a rally protesting against Lukashenko's re-election, and proclaimed the creation of a movement to "liberate" the country.
"I declare the creation of a Popular Movement for the Liberation of Belarus," Milinkevich told a crowd of several thousands massed in a park in the capital Minsk.
Rows of riot police blocked a central square yesterday, pushing crowds back in a show of force meant to prevent a planned protest against Lukashenko, but thousands of demonstrators defiantly gathered in a park nearby.
Tensions mounted swiftly around October Square in central Minsk as police in full riot gear arrived by the busloads to shove protesters back. The crowd at a major intersection near the square -- where Lenin Street meets Independence Avenue -- quickly swelled from a few hundred to some 3,000. Demonstrators shouted "Shame!" and "Long live Belarus!"
On the other side of the square near Lukashenko's headquarters, Milinkevich stood with more protesters, many holding patriotic red-and-white flags.
He was not permitted to pass, and instead led the demonstrators to a nearby park, where the crowd swelled to 3,000 or 4,000 people.
"The authorities can only confront the striving of the people for change with persecution and violence," Milinkevich told the crowd, amid shouts of "Mi-lin-ke-vich!"
"The people have come out today, they have come out in the face of truncheons, in the face of arrests. We are working against dictatorship, Milinkevich said.
"The more the authorities conduct repression, the closer they bring themselves to their end," he said.
Meanwhile, police pushed part of the crowd at the intersection near October Square away down a hill and most of the people who had been there dispersed.
The tense scenes came a day after police stormed a tent camp in October Square that had been the focus of round-the-clock protests over the March 19 election.
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