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In Belarus, protests against President Lukashenko continue, this time thousands of women are taking to the streets in Minsk, despite warnings from the police. They demand the release of prisoners and new elections.
Despite the strict ban on demonstrations, thousands of women protested against the head of state Alexander Lukashenko in Belarus. They walked through the capital Minsk. Police and special police units stopped in the city center to obstruct the protest march towards the Plaza de la Independencia. There were also emergency services and buses prepared for possible arrests.
Police warned in advertisements that the action was not allowed. Metro stations in the capital were temporarily closed. The objective of the protest “Great Parade of Peacekeepers” is to achieve the liberation of the prisoners, prosecute police violence and secure new elections, she said. Some men were arrested on the sidelines of the action. Women occupy a prominent place in the democratic movement in Minsk. A two-kilometer-long protest march was planned from Freedom Square through downtown to Independence Square.
The leader of the democratic movement is activist Svetlana Tichanovskaya. The 37-year-old ran against Lukashenko in the presidential election on August 9, but Lukashenko is claiming victory after 26 years in power. The electoral commission gave him 80.1 percent of the vote, while Tichanowskaya only 10 percent. The election is criticized internationally for being grossly falsified.
Strong criticism from the EU and the US.
Lukashenko’s supporters also took to the streets again. The state agency Belta published photos of cars with the red and green state flag. Unlike opposition protests, these actions are allowed. In recent days, security forces had repeatedly taken action against protesters. According to the Interior Ministry, there were 32 arrests on Friday, after around 260 the day before. At the beginning of the protests, the uniformed officers detained almost 7,000 people.
After that, the security forces largely held back. The United States, the EU, Britain and Switzerland harshly criticized the violent crackdown. “We condemn the disproportionate use of force and call on the Belarusian authorities to cease the violence and threats to use military force against the country’s own citizens,” the representations of the three countries and the EU in Minsk said in a joint statement.
More recently, journalists have also been targeted by the authoritarian government. A reporter for the German Press Agency in Minsk reported that accreditations had been withdrawn from various representatives of Western media. Some have already been expelled from the country. The authorities appear to want to avoid reporting on the protests nationwide. The country’s journalists’ association spoke of a massive withdrawal of work permits for representatives of the Belarusian media who worked for foreign radio or television stations, newspapers and news agencies.
ARD team
According to the WDR, an ARD camera crew that was held overnight at a police station was also affected. It was released again on Saturday morning. “If journalists are arbitrarily placed without any legal basis and prevented from doing their important work by withdrawing their work permits, then that is not at all acceptable,” said German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas of the SPD. according to a statement. Independent information must be comprehensively guaranteed. “This attack on press freedom is another dangerous step towards greater repression instead of dialogue with the population.”
The director of the WDR program, Jörg Schönenborn, was appalled. “This shows once again that independent reporting in Belarus is becoming increasingly difficult and almost impossible,” he said. The US embassy in Minsk asked the authorities not to detain the journalists and to stop blocking access to the Internet. Tichanovskaya criticized the cancellation of accreditations as an attempt to scare and intimidate society. The head of the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin, reiterated that he had no doubts about the electoral victory.
“As you know, I congratulated Alexander Lukashenko on his victory,” he said in an interview with state television station Rossija 1. Regarding the falsification accusations, he said: nothing in the world is “ideal” – “neither in politics nor in politics. policy “Economy still in the social field.” Putin had publicly announced for the first time that he would send troops from the Russian Interior Ministry if the situation in the neighboring country worsened. Moscow had previously warned the West on several occasions not to interfere in the power struggle.
