Belarus says police detained thousand protesters overnight
Belarusian police detained a lot more than 1,000 protesters on the 3rd nights protests on Tuesday that broke out over a contested election handing a fresh term to President Alexander Lukashenko, the Belarusian Interior Ministry said on Wednesday.
The ministry said 51 protesters and 14 police officers were hurt through the protests overnight. A BBC team in Minsk was attacked by police, who were accused by protesters of brutality. Protests erupted hours after Belarus leader Alexander Lukashenko was awarded victory in Sunday's presidential vote.The EU said the election was "neither free nor fair" Sweden's foreign minister said EU foreign ministers would meet on Friday to go over imposing sanctions on Belarus.
Lukashenko won 80% of Sunday's vote, according to election officials, but there have been widespread allegations of vote rigging and EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said Belarusians had demonstrated "the desire for democratic change" in the election campaign. When Tikhanovskaya visited the electoral committee to complain about the results that gave her just 10% of the vote, she was detained for seven hours.
By Tuesday morning she had left Belarus for neighboring Lithuania. Borrell accused authorities of using "disproportionate and unacceptable violence triggering at least one death and many injuries". Websites, which were jammed in Belarus for days, were widely reported to be back online on Wednesday morning.
State TV has said little about the protests and two presenters have announced their resignations. There were numerous reports of police violence, with people seen being pulled out of cars on a third night of unrest. One protester has died and 200 others have already been wounded, some seriously. Two thousand more have already been detained. The brutality of the crackdown has shocked observers.
However, official newspaper Belarus Segodnya, said the protest "co-ordinators" have been detained, including one Minsk resident said to have organized the "mass disturbances" from a accommodation. Svetlana Tikhanovskaya galvanized the opposition, attracting big rallies prior to the vote. The 37-year-old former teacher was a stay-at-home mother until she entered the race after her husband was arrested and blocked from registering for the vote.
She was one of three women who pooled their resources to spearhead the opposition. Veronika Tsepkalo fled Belarus on your day of the vote and Maria Kolesnikova remains in Belarus. According to her campaign partner, Tikhanovskaya have been escorted from the united states by the authorities within a deal to allow the release of her campaign manager, Maria Moroz, who was simply arrested on Friday evening.
