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Protests continue against Alexander Lukashenko, accused of cheating the presidency in the August 9 elections.
– Our president is Sveta, chanted a group of women before they were abruptly abducted by the riot police.
Sveta refers to opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who is currently in exile for fear of reprisals from the power apparatus surrounding Lukashenko.
Nina Bahinskaja, who often led protests in Belarus, was also arrested last weekend but was later released, according to the human rights organization Vjasna.
Carrying the flag of the opposition
During the protests, several of the protesters, including Bahinskaya, carried the white-red-white opposition flag, which became the country after liberation from the Soviet Union in 1991. Four years later, when Lukashenko took office power, the white-red-white flag was removed.
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, 66, is often called the last dictator in Europe. On Wednesday, he shocked the outside world and the citizens of Belarus when he suddenly took the oath of office for a new term as the country’s president.
After the August presidential elections, protests erupted on a scale not seen since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Since then, thousands of people have been arrested and there are numerous testimonies of beatings and torture by the police.
