BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

21/01/2008

Belarus protest dispersed by police

By Andrei Makhovsky
Reuters

MINSK (Reuters) - Police in ex-Soviet Belarus dispersed a protest on Monday by about 2,000 entrepreneurs denouncing President Alexander Lukashenko's decree that places restrictions on hiring staff.

The rally, the second such protest this month, went ahead in central October Square without official permission and organizers said about 15 activists were detained.

Clearly wanting to avoid confrontation after Interior Minister Viktor Naumov threatened to remove them by force, they were pushed to nearby pavements by riot police beating their shields.

"We now see a general practice in Belarus of state pressure on business," Viktor Krival, one of the leaders of the small business protest, told protesters in the square, scene of big demonstrations against Lukashenko's re-election two years ago.

"The decree aims to destroy the individual entrepreneur."

Businessmen say the new regulations deny them the right to hire workers outside their immediate families or obliges them to re-register and be subject to higher taxes.

Leaders of the 200,000-strong movement of small entrepreneurs have threatened to go on strike from next month and to withhold tax payments. Protests three years ago prompted authorities to roll back on changes in regulations.

Lukashenko is accused by Western countries of running roughshod over basic rights by jailing opponents, crushing independent media and rigging elections, including his re-election to a third term in 2006.

Dozens of activists were detained at a similar protest two weeks ago and handed short jail terms for public order offences.

Belarus's most prominent opposition leader, interviewed by Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, said authorities were reacting "very nervously" by arresting protesters.

Entrepreneurs, once apolitical, had been galvanized by the threat to their livelihood, Alexander Milinkevich said, and the liberal and nationalist opposition was helping them.

"While Lukashenko is putting the thumbscrews on the domestic private sector, he is handing out licenses everywhere in the cities to foreign supermarket chains which small businesses can no longer compete with," Milinkevich told the daily.

"In this situation, the merchants recognize that their only chance for survival is to take their protest on to the streets."

(Additional reporting by Ian Rogers in Berlin, Writing by Sabina Zawadzki; Editing by Jon Boyle)

Source:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/21/AR2008012100930.html

Google
 


Partners:
Face.by Social Network
Face.by