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More than 300 arrests during the women’s protest against Lukashenko. Image: keystone
Lukashenko has hundreds of women arrested, including a 73-year-old protest veteran.
In Minsk on Saturday about 2000 women demonstrated for a change of power. The dictator Lukashenko sent a large contingent of policemen. More than 300 women were arrested, including a 73-year veteran of the protest movement.
According to human rights activists, more than 300 arrests were made in the new protest action by women in Belarus against the head of state Alexander Lukashenko. The civil rights portal spring96.org published the names of more than 300 women who were detained during the action in the capital Minsk on Saturday. The number was roughly double the protests on Saturday a week ago, when masked uniformed men used brutal violence against peaceful protesters for the first time. There were also injuries a week ago.
Despite threats of violence from the police, numerous women met again in Minsk. “We do not forget! We do not forgive!” And “Lukashenko w Avtosak!” – In German: “Lukashenko, in the prisoner transporter,” the protesters chanted at the Komarowski central market. The prisoners’ vans waited at various locations. Motorists honk their horns in solidarity with women, as reported by a reporter for the dpa news agency.
When the uniformed men attacked, the women screamed loudly and shouted “Posor!” (“Shame!”). Nina Baginskaja, 73, a veteran of the protest movement and a dissident known since her fight against communists in Soviet times, was also forced into a van.
The 73-year-old dissident, Nina Baginskaja, is led by masked uniformed men. Image: keystone
Since the presidential elections on August 9, there have been daily protests in Belarus. Lukashenko had been declared the winner of the election with 80.1 percent of the vote after 26 years in office. The 66-year-old is running for a sixth term. The opposition, however, sees Svetlana Tichanowskaya as the real winner.
The “March of Women’s Solidarity”, as it was called, traveled several streets on Saturday without police intervention. “Long live Belarus!” The women shouted as they carried the historic white-red-white flags. Sometimes they opened umbrellas in the colors of the revolution because the security forces repeatedly confiscated the flags. Dissident Baginskaja lost her seventh flag on Saturday: she sews the parts herself, as she told dpa.
The protesters are demanding new elections without Lukashenko, the release of all political prisoners and the prosecution of police violence. Also in other cities of the country, women were called upon, as on previous Saturdays, to demonstrate peacefully against “the last European dictatorship.” The Girl Power Belarus organizers announced this on their news channel on Telegram.
The police had warned, as every day during the protests against Lukashenko, that street actions were not authorized. Only Lukashenko supporters rallies are allowed, but they are hardly attended.
Tichanovskaya praised the bravery of the women from her exile in the EU. “They are leaving, even though they are constantly scared and under pressure,” the 38-year-old said. At the same time, she accused Lukashenko’s “regime” of a new low point in which she now also instrumentalized children. Authorities had put the six-year-old son of Minsk activist Jelena Lasartschik in a house on Friday. Hundreds of people asked that their son be returned to her parents on Saturday off the premises. Lasartschik left the house with the boy in the morning, to the shouts of “Hurray” and applause from the crowd. The case was also the subject of a women’s protest on Saturday.
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki reacted in shock to this incident. Once again, the country’s leadership used the children as “political hostages”. The practice has been known since the communist days of the Soviet Union, when attempts were made to break the political will of women in this way. “This barbarism must end,” the Polish politician wrote on Twitter.
During the election campaign, Tichanovskaya also reported that she had been threatened with losing her children. She then had her son and daughter brought to neighboring EU country Lithuania. Her colleague Viktoria Zepkalo had also protected her children from access by the authorities in this way.
Swetlana Tichanowskaja. Image: sda
“They are trying to give us a choice: to be loyal to our own children or to the country,” Tichanovskaya wrote in a statement. But such intentions are ineffective because the determination of women is underestimated. “There is nothing stronger than a mother who fights for the future of her son, her family and her country.” Tichanowskaja had justified her candidacy in the presidential elections: she wanted to fight for a life in freedom for her children in Belarus until the end. (sda / dpa)
