BELARUS: Belarus's Alexander Milinkevich says many opposition activists arrested since start of protests against Belarussian President Lukashenko's election win

Record ID: 858141

  • Title: BELARUS: Belarus's Alexander Milinkevich says many opposition activists arrested since start of protests against Belarussian President Lukashenko's election win
  • Date: 21st March 2006
  • Summary: (BN09) MINSK, BELARUS (MARCH 21, 2006) (REUTERS) SNOW CLEARING TRACTORS ARRIVE ON SQUARE AND COME TO A STOP NEAR THE PROTESTORS TRACTORS WITH PROTESTORS NEARBY (2 SHOTS)
  • Embargoed: 5th April 2006 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Belarus
  • City:
  • Country: Belarus
  • Topics: Domestic Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVAC3HH6OBAXWQ7JL6CVVRUZPJFD
  • Aspect Ratio:
  • Story Text: Hundreds of protesters defied Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko for a third day on Tuesday (March 21), massing to protest at his re-election, denounced as flawed by observers.
    The demonstrators say Lukashenko's win was rigged. Supporters of Alexander Milinkevich, the main opposition candidate are calling for a rerun of the election in July.
    The numbers of protesters had fallen to about 300 by mid-afternoon and the police, who in the past have quickly broken up anti-government demonstrations, held back from action against them -- apparently banking on the protest soon petering out.
    A lot depended on whether significant numbers of people would turn out to join the hard core of demonstrators for fresh protests at the end of the working day.
    At least 500 protesters, most of them young people, camped in tents on October Square overnight in an action reminiscent of the highly-organised 2004 "Orange Revolution" in Ukraine.
    Though modest in scale, the action was unprecedented for Belarus, where Lukashenko's state security service usually cracks down swiftly on public dissent.
    Court hearings against some opposition activists detained earlier opened in Minsk.
    Opposition and human rights activists said police had detained more than 108 protesters, including key opposition figures and journalists, since the start of protests against Lukashenko's re-election.
    "108 people and maybe by now even more individuals have been arrested. It has nothing to do with what is happening here. They (the authorities) are mean and cowardly and do not want to come here to arrest people; so they arrest them around the corner on trumped up charges of being rude and obstructive to the police. That is their tactic now," Milinkevich told protesters in October Square.
    Earlier on Tuesday police foot patrols and snow-clearing tractors harassed the protesters.
    One protester was seen being dragged away by plain clothes police, and only got away as a group of photographers arrived at the scene.
    Lukashenko, 12 years in power and criticised by the opposition and the West for authoritarian Soviet-style rule, swept back into office on Monday with an official tally of 82.6 percent of votes.
    Nearest rival Alexander Milinkevich, with 6 percent, called the poll fraudulent, a view shared widely in the West, though the result was never in doubt given Lukashenko's control over much of public life and media.
    On Monday, up to 7,000 protesters gathered in the square, compared with 10,000 after polls closed on Sunday evening.
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
  • Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2014. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
  • Usage Terms/Restrictions: None
Register