Belarus launches criminal lawsuit against new opposition party

MINSK (Reuters) – Belarus on Thursday launched a criminal case against a new opposition court, accusing it of an illegal attempt to seize power, a day after President Alexander Lukashenko threatened to block the streets of Protestants rejecting his re-election.

Belarus is facing its biggest political crisis since the break-up of the Soviet Union, with tens of thousands of protesters claiming Lukashenko’s victory in an August. 9-vote rejection that his opponents say were rigged.

Opponents of Lukashenko, who has been in power for 26 years, unveiled the Coordination Board on Tuesday with the stated aim of negotiating a transfer of power.

The dozens of members include a Nobel Prize-winning author and the disenfranchised head of Minsk’s main theater, as well as an exile as presidential candidate Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, whose followers say she won the election.

The Office of the Public Prosecutor described the body as being designed to seize power, and the act to pose a threat to national security, the Russian news agency RIA reported. No persons were named as suspects in the case.

The council said one of its members, Maksim Znak, was called to appear before the criminal investigation committee on Friday. It issued a statement saying his efforts were legal.

“The accusation is completely baseless and unfounded. Our goal is to resolve the crisis without conflict. We do not advocate for power to take over, “councilor Syarhei Dyleuski, chair of a committee of prominent workers at the Minsk Tractor Factory, told Reuters.

SWITCH SIDES

After days of enormous rallies that drew tens of thousands of protesters, protests on Thursday were reduced but not stopped.

Lukashenko announced on Wednesday that he had instructed police to clear the streets of the capital, although no action was taken against hundreds of protesters who later that day set up a roadblock at the police station. By noon on Thursday, there was still no sign of a decisive security action.

In a video message, one of the opposition leaders, Maria Kolesnikova, called on members of the security forces to refuse “illegal orders” and promised immunity from prosecution if they “switched to the side of the people”.

Outside the Janka Kupala National Theater, which has become a focus of rallies since its director was fired in support of the protests and the entire troop of actors fired, a group of folk singers was attended by a small audience in a singalong.

“Now, no one can just keep quiet, sit at home, observe the jaw and see how our people are murdered,” said musician Sergei Dolgushayev.

Larger gatherings are expected again over the weekend.

OPPOSITION CANDIDATE

Tsikhanouskaya, a 37-year-old political novice, emerged as the consensus opposition candidate after well-known figures were prevented from standing, including her husband, an activist who has been imprisoned since May.

Since the vote, she has fled to neighboring Lithuania, releasing videos urging her supporters to stand up for peace. Lithuanian Prime Minister Saulius Skvernelis met her at his office in Vilnius on Thursday.

He assured them that the government, together with its partners in Poland, Latvia and Estonia, is doing and will do everything in its power to ensure that there are free and fair elections in Belarus, and that their children are able to release their father as soon as possible, He wrote on Facebook.

That drew a thinly veiled dismissal from the Kremlin, which said Moscow would see any contact between foreign officials and the Belarusian opposition as interference in Belarusian affairs.

The crisis in Belarus, Russia’s most loyal neighbor, is a test for the Kremlin, which must decide whether to try to control a transfer of power or stick with Lukashenko, the gruesome one-time boss of a collective farm in the Soviet era.

It also poses a challenge to Western leaders, envious of violence six years after a popular uprising in neighboring Ukraine drew Russian military intervention and launched Europe’s deadliest ongoing conflict.

The EU has rejected Lukashenko’s re-election and EU President Charles Michel spoke on Thursday with President Vladimir Putin, the latest in several phone calls between Putin and European leaders this week. The Kremlin said Putin had told Michel that pressure on Lukashenko would be counterproductive.

Of all Russia’s former Russian neighbors, Belarus has the closest political, economic and cultural relations with Moscow, and its strongly strengthened borders with Latvia, Lithuania and Poland are important NATO fronts.