Employers of state-owned enterprises join mass protests against President Belarus

MINSK (Reuters) – Employers of state-owned industrial plants joined tens of thousands of people in a fifth day of protests against Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, despite a violent collapse that has prompted the West to impose new sanctions.

Protesters formed human chains and marched in Minsk, along with at least two television presenters from the tightly controlled state media who fired in protest of the violence that followed Lukashenko’s contested re-election.

A former Soviet collective farm manager, Lukashenko is struggling to meet the biggest challenge in years to his government of the country that is seen by neighboring Russia as a strategic buffer against NATO and the European Union.

Protesters accuse Lukashenko of rigging last Sunday’s presidential election to win a sixth term. The president, claiming a plot with foreign support to destabilize the country, dismissed the protesters as criminals and unemployed.

Authorities began releasing some of the thousands of protesters arrested this week.

Some of those released from a detention center in Minsk had bruises and described being tightly packed in cells and complaining of abuse, including beatings. A spokeswoman for the Interior Ministry declined to comment.

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Thursday’s protesters were joined by workers from some state-owned industrial plants who are proud of Lukashenko’s Soviet-style economic model, including the Minsk Automobile Plant (MAZ) which makes trucks and buses.

In Minsk, ambassadors from EU countries laid flowers at the place where one protester died, when a crowd cheered and roared.

Lukashenko has sought better relations with the West amid tight ties with Russia’s traditional ally.

The EU lifted sanctions in 2016, introduced over Lukashenko’s human rights record, in 2016, but was able to introduce new measures earlier this month. Germany called on the EU to put pressure on Lukashenko.

Russia, which has urged Lukashenko to accept closer political and economic ties, expressed concern about what it portrayed as attempts by external forces to destabilize Belarus.

“We note unusual pressure exerted by individual foreign partners on the Belarussian authorities,” said Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova.

“We can see clear attempts of outside mediation in the internal affairs of a sovereign state to create a rift in society and destabilize the situation,” she told reporters.

Lukashenko, 65, has been in power for more than a quarter of a century, but is increasingly angry about his handling of the coronavirus pandemic – which he dismissed as a “psychosis” – a slow economy and human rights.

Anna Krasulina, spokeswoman for opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who fled to neighboring Lithuania earlier this week and said she was worried for the safety of her children, told Reuters she expected Tsikhanouskaya to release a video message later on Thursday.

Michelle Bachelet, the UN human rights lawyer, has condemned the mass detention “including circumstances, such as minors, and suggested a trend of massive arrests in clear violation of international human rights standards”.

People outside the detention center of Okrestina, some in tears, were waiting in the hope of glistening news about friends and relatives. Police and soldiers with machine guns drove them away when they got too close.

Sergei, one of the released prisoners, said there had been 28 people in a cell that would normally contain five. Prisoners took turns sleeping, he said, and were given one piece of bread to distribute for two days.

“They did not beat me in the cell, they took me out of the cell and beat me there,” said Sergei, who refused to give his last name.

Reuters could not independently verify his account.

Vartan Grigoryan, another freed detainee, had injuries to his face. “I was arrested, beaten, taken prisoner and beaten again,” he told Reuters. “After that I felt bad and I was taken to the hospital by ambulance.”