BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS
DATE:
25/03/2008
Thousand demonstrate in Belarussian capital
The Associated Press
MINSK, Belarus: Thousands of opposition protesters defied a government ban to stage a demonstration honoring a banned Belarussian holiday Tuesday. Many of them clashed with the riot police and dozens were detained.
President Alexander Lukashenko's authoritarian government had vowed to prevent any demonstrations, but thousands turned out in central Minsk to converge on a square that was blocked off by heavily armed police.
Protesters, many of whom appeared to be students, chanted "Long live Belarus!" and waved opposition and European Union flags as the police warned them through loudspeakers that the meeting was illegal and that they should disperse. After about an hour, the police began wading into the crowds, beating demonstrators with truncheons and hauling them away to police trucks.
The Interior Ministry reported that more than 80 people had been detained.
But Alis Belasky, who heads the human rights group Vesna, said that more than 100 people had been delivered to different police precincts around Minsk and that Ukrainians and Poles were among them. A Belarussian newspaper photographer was severely beaten in the scuffles, he said.
The opposition leader Anatoly Lebedko said: "The authorities have resorted to extreme measures. By doing this, they are showing to the world that Belarus is a dictatorship with no freedom of speech nor freedom to gather."
Hundreds of people later broke off from the main protest and tried to march down a street to the presidential administration building. The road was blocked by police trucks and officers in riot gear who also dragged protesters into waiting trucks.
March 25 has long been a traditional day of demonstration for opposition groups, marking what they call Freedom Day: the anniversary of the 1918 declaration of the first, short-lived independent Belarussian state. Lukashenko's government has banned such rallies in the past, and opposition groups reported that security agents were arresting activists around the country before the demonstrations Tuesday and shutting down bus and subway stops near the Minsk square.
"Of course today more forces and equipment will be deployed," Interior Minister Vladimir Naumov said before the event. "Any unsanctioned march will be prevented in accordance with the necessary laws."
Lukashenko has been dubbed "Europe's last dictator" by the United States and some European countries for his government's efforts to crush opposition groups and independent media.
On Monday, the United States announced that it would cut staffing at its embassy in Minsk in half, bowing to Belarus's demands amid worsening relations between the two countries - sparked mainly by U.S. sanctions on the state-controlled oil-processing and chemicals company Belneftekhim.
Minsk increased the pressure this week with a state television report that accused the U.S. Embassy of setting up a spy ring in the former Soviet republic. On Tuesday, Valery Nadtochaev, a spokesman for the top security agency, said, "What was shown on Belarusian TV about spies, this is indeed true." He declined to give any further details.
The report claimed that 10 Belarussians were recruited to collect information for use against Belarus and had turned it over to the FBI. It said they were provided with an apartment near the embassy and equipped with cameras, binoculars and other items.
The top U.S. diplomat in Belarus, Jonathan Moore, denied that the United States was running a spy ring, and said the embassy had given the Foreign Ministry a complete list of its employees. "There are no secrets and no plots here," he said to the Belarussian news agency BelaPAN.
Source:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/03/25/europe/belarus.php
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