BELARUS: POLICE BEAT UP STUDENTS AS BELARUS'S FIRST McDONALD'S RESTAURANT OPENS, AS PEOPLE BELIEVE FREE FOOD IS ON OFFER

Record ID: 571809

  • Title: BELARUS: POLICE BEAT UP STUDENTS AS BELARUS'S FIRST McDONALD'S RESTAURANT OPENS, AS PEOPLE BELIEVE FREE FOOD IS ON OFFER
  • Date: 9th December 1996
  • Summary: MINSK, BELARUS (DECEMBER 9-10, 1996) (RTV - ACCESS ALL) 1. GV EXTERIOR MCDONALDS, CROWD OF PEOPLE STANDING OUTSIDE 0.04 2. SLV POLICE OFFICER WITH MEGAPHONE TRYING TO CONTROL CROWD OUTSIDE MCDONALDS 0.07 3. HAS TRAM FULL OF PEOPLE TRYING TO PUSH THROUGH CROWD AS MIDNIGHT CELEBRATIONS START 0.18 4. HAS PEOPLE DANCING WITH FIREWORKS IN STREET/ MCDONALDS SIGN LIT BY FIREWORKS 0.27 5. HAS TRUCK DRIVING CLOSE TO CROWD, TRYING TO CLEAR STREET 0.30 6. GV FIREWORKS IN AIR, PEOPLE WHISTLING 0.42 7. HAS CROWD PUSHING, POLICE HOLDING THEM BACK 8. HAS TRAM PUSHING THROUGH CROWD 0.54 9. SCU UNIDENTIFIED MAN SAYING: "I AM HUNGRY AND THE ONLY PLACE WHERE I CAN CALMLY EAT IS AT MCDONALDS" (RUSSIAN) 0.59 10.GV PEOPLE FOLLOWING TRAM/ POLICE HITTING PEOPLE WITH TRUNCHEONS 1.11 11. GV OF FIREWORKS AT CELEBRATIONS (6 SHOTS) 1.45 Initials Script is copyright Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
  • Embargoed: 24th December 1996 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: MINSK, BELARUS
  • City:
  • Country: EUROPE Belarus
  • Reuters ID: LVA5DWR0DHZNNBKHPN855Y4T5QGA
  • Story Text: INTRO: Belarus police have beaten students with truncheons as they descended on the former Soviet republic's first McDonald's restaurant, believing free food was on offer.

    About 4,000 people, many of them students keen to try their first "Big Mac", filled the central avenue of the Belarus capital Minsk on Tuesday (December 10) as the fast food giant celebrated opening its doors in a 100th country.

    Cheers as fireworks ripped through the air mixed with screams as riot police set to with truncheons to stop them crushing their way into the restaurant.

    Officials from the fast food giant appealed to the crowd through loudspeakers not to push forward and threatened to close the restaurant, which had opened at midnight.

    McDonald's is charging the equivalent of $1 for a "Big Mac" in a country where the average monthly wage is around $50.

    Rumours were rife that the first customers would get free food or a prize and about 1,000 people kept trying to squeeze through the doors until dozens of special OMON police stopped them and set up metal barriers.

    "Stuff the police with hamburgers " one young woman in the crowd shouted, angered at the use of violence.

    "I was waiting for fireworks, but not this kind of fireworks," said Sergei Patskevich, a student who said he was hit by a truncheon.

    The pushing and shoving lasted about an hour.

    Belarus, a country of 10 million people between Russian and Poland, is struggling for foreign investment and a senior official welcomed the arrival of McDonald's, describing it as a "kind of indicator of western investments".

    Some investors have been deterred by Belarus's conservative political administration under president Alexander Lukashenko.

    Three restaurants were opening in Minsk overnight, and another four were planned for other regional centres by 1998.


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