Thousands of protesters in Belarus swarmed the streets of the capital for the 13th straight Sunday to demand the resignation of the country’s longtime president, encountering police using stun grenades to break up the crowds and firing warning shots in the air from what authorities said were “non-lethal weapons.”
Up to 20,000 people took part in the rally, the Visana Human Rights Center said.
Large crowds of people gathered in the eastern part of Minsk headed toward Kurapaty, a wooded area on the city’s outskirts where more than 200,000 people were executed by Soviet secret police during Stalinist-era purges.
Photo: AFP
Demonstrators carried banners reading: “The people’s memory [lasts] longer than a life of a dictatorship” and “Stop torturing your people.”
The crowds directed chants of “Go away” at Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who won his sixth term in an Aug. 9 election that is widely seen as rigged.
Lukashenko’s crushing victory over his popular, inexperienced challenger, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, has triggered the largest and the most sustained wave of mass protests of his 26 years in power.
The 66-year-old former state farm director, who was once nicknamed “Europe’s Latest Dictator,” has relentlessly suppressed opposition and independent media in Belarus, but has struggled to quell the recent unrest.
Large protest crowds have assembled in the streets of Minsk and other cities almost daily, despite police countering the demonstrations with water cannons, stun grenades, rubber bullets and mass detentions.
The Belarusian Ministry of Internal Affairs threatened to use firearms against the rally-goers “if need be.”
On Sunday, police said that officers had fired several warning shots into the air during the demonstration in Minsk “to prevent violations of the law,” but maintained that “non-lethal weapons” were used.
Armored off-road vehicles equipped with machine guns were seen in Minsk for the first time in almost three months of protests, along with water cannon vehicles and other anti-riot equipment. Several metro stations were closed, and mobile Internet service did not work.
Police detained more than 250 people in Minsk and other Belarusian cities where protests were held, Viasna said.
Several journalists were among the detainees, and many of those detained were beaten up, human rights activists said.
“The authorities are trying to close the lid on the boiling Belarusian pot more tightly, but history knows very well what this leads to,” Viasna leader Ales Bialiatski said.
Tikhanovskaya issued a statement in support of the protests.
“The terror is happening once again in our country right now,” Tikhanovskaya said. “We haven’t forgotten our past, we won’t forget what is happening now.”
More than 15,000 people have been detained since the presidential election.
Human rights activists have declared more than 100 of them to be political prisoners.
All prominent members at the helm of the opposition’s Coordination Council, which was formed to push for a transition of power, have either been jailed or left the country.
Another activist on the council, Denis Gotto, was detained during Sunday’s demonstration.
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