BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

28/04/2006

Belarus opposition head jailed over rally

ISN SECURITY WATCH (Friday, 28 April 2006: 11.22 CET) - A court in Belarus has key opposition leader Alexander Milinkevich and several of his associates to prison terms for taking part in an allegedly unsanctioned march.

Milinkevic was sentenced to 15 days in prison on Thursday for holding illegal demonstrations in the capital, Minsk, the day before, three other opposition figures were sentenced to two weeks in prison each.

The European Commission on Thursday condemned the arrests, calling for Milinkevich's immediate release.

Milinkevich said the move to imprison him for the Chernobyl 20th anniversary march was a "political sentence".

On Wednesday, the day before the march, the authorities had approved the rally in Minsk. However, a march to the rally site was deemed unsanctioned, news reports said.

Participants in the rally denounced Belarusian President Aleksandar Lukashenko's authoritarian regime.

Milinkevich has remained defiant, saying on Wednesday that he would launch a process aimed at impeaching Lukashenko and called for another rally on 1 May.

"We will destroy this regime through acts of peaceful disobedience. We will not wait for the next election in five years. We can overcome the dictatorship in the next two years, perhaps sooner," Milinkevich said.

Milinkevich was the main opposition candidate against Lukashenko in 19 March presidential elections.

Lukashenko won a landslide victory with 83 per cent of the vote. The opposition and international observers denounced the vote as fraudulent.

Source:

http://www.isn.ethz.ch/news/sw/details.cfm?ID=15662