Belarus authorities free hundreds detained after election protests
Belarusian authorities have released hundreds of people who were detained amid demonstrations contesting the results of the presidential election, in an attempt to assuage public anger over a brutal crackdown on peaceful protests.
Scores of detainees were seen walking out of a jail in the capital, Minsk, at around midnight on 13 August. Early on 14 August, volunteers also saw at least 119 detainees being released in the nearby сity of Zhodino.
Ambulances arrived to carry those who were apparently unable to walk on their own.
Indiscriminate force
The releases came hours after Belarus’s top law enforcement official apologised on state television for the indiscriminate use of force by police. Late on 13 August, interior minister Yuri Karayev said:
I take responsibility for what they say was violence against those people, who happened to be nearby and failed to back off quickly enough
Read on...
The apology and the release of detainees followed five days of massive protests, in which crowds of demonstrators swarmed the streets to contest the poll results and demand an end to the 26-year rule of authoritarian president Alexander Lukashenko.
On 13 August, thousands of workers rallied outside industrial plants to denounce the police actions and push for a recount of the election vote. Nearly 7,000 people have been detained and hundreds injured in the crackdown on demonstrators protesting over official results which said Lukashenko won 80% of the vote and his top opposition challenger only 10%.
Police have broken up protests with stun grenades, tear gas, rubber bullets, and severe beatings.
On 13 August, hundreds of women formed long “lines of solidarity” in several areas of Minsk. Many were dressed in white and carried flowers and portraits of detained loved ones. The human chains grew throughout the day, filling the capital’s main central squares and avenues and spreading to numerous other cities as motorists honked in support.
In Minsk and several other cities, thousands of factory workers also rallied against the police violence, raising the prospect of strikes in a new challenge to the government. Amid growing public dismay, dozens of military and police veterans posted videos in which they threw away their uniforms and insignia. Several popular anchors at Belarus’s state TV stations have quit.
The top opposition challenger in the vote Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya suddenly emerged in neighbouring Lithuania on 11 August and called on her supporters to stop protests in a video that her associates said was recorded under pressure from law enforcement officials before she left. The 37-year-old former teacher had joined the race to replace her husband, an opposition blogger, who has been in prison since May.
Unprecedented
The massive protests against the election results and police brutality have been an unprecedented challenge to Lukashenko, who has been in power since 1994 and earned the nickname of “Europe’s last dictator” for his relentless crackdown on dissent.
After dismissing protesters as mostly ex-convicts and unemployed, the authoritarian leader kept silent on 13 August as the demonstrations spread quickly. Some reports said he was preparing an address to the nation.
Belarusian upper house speaker Natalya Kochanova said late on 13 August that more than 1,000 detainees had been released earlier in the day following Lukashenko’s order to law enforcement agencies to look more closely into the detentions.
Casualties
A protester died in Minsk on 10 August when, according to the Interior Ministry, an explosive device he tried to throw at police blew up in his hand. Media reports challenged the ministry’s claim, alleging that he was killed by police.
The place where he died quickly turned into a pilgrimage site, with hundreds of people, including European ambassadors, laying flowers there. The authorities said a detainee died in the south-eastern city of Gomel, but the circumstances of his death were not immediately clear.
The brutal suppression of protests drew harsh criticism in the West. European Union foreign ministers were set to meet on 14 August to discuss a response, and German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said the 27-nation bloc would “increase the pressure” on Belarus.
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It’s no coincidence that the world is increasingly run by scumbags like Lukashenko; once the despots learned how to subvert the electoral mechanisms of Democracy, that was basically it for the modern Democratic experiment after, what? – not much more than a century or so. From gangsters like Trump and Putin to this little shit, they can all claim legitimacy by having “won” the support of the people through the ballot box, that they themselves have rigged. Brazil, Hungary, Turkey, the Philippines, Syria – there are 50 or more countries defined as dictatorships, or ‘Not Free’, by sites like PlanetRulers, and the majority of their leaders have been elected.
Having said that, it is heartening to see the people of Belarus fighting back against Lukashenko’s transparent criminality, but we’ve seen that before, and it rarely ends well. How wonderful it would be if – just once – a People could rid itself of a worthless, self-serving kleptocracy, and put something better in its place. And what a model for the rest of us that would be.
Be careful what you wish for. The leader of the country you are slagging off has ensured that people have access to one of the best social welfare and health care systems in eastern Europe. It’s just so easy to cry about so called ‘rigged elections’ as justification for cranking up the unrest by the losers in order to create a Maiden type situation but where’s their evidence? Now Ukraine is a political and economic basket case but totally compliant to NATO and the EU empire builders. Trump claimed the Venezualan elections were rigged and the EU agreed even though the Jimmy Carter foundation said they were free and fair. They said the Bolivian elections were rigged so a viscous right wing coup could then remove Morales from power. The MSM narrative has always been to demonise legitimate countries and leaders to make it more acceptable for their replacement by someone more friendly to the west.