Belarus Protesters Keep Pressure On Lukashenko With New March

Belarusian protesters on Sunday prepared a new mass
demonstration against strongman Alexander Lukashenko who has
refused to quit after a disputed re-election and turned to Russia
for help.

Unprecedented protests broke out in the ex-Soviet country after
Lukashenko, who has ruled the ex-Soviet state for 26 years, claimed
re-election with 80 percent of the vote on August 9.

Opposition rival Svetlana Tikhanovskaya says she has won the
vote but Lukashenko’s security forces have detained thousands of
protesters, many of whom accused police of beatings and
torture.

Several people have died in the crackdown but Belarusians have
been demonstrating across the country for nearly a month, with more
than 100,000 people flooding the streets of the capital Minsk for
three straight weekends.

Dozens of people including student protesters and journalists
covering rallies were detained this week.

On Saturday, around 4,000 people took to the streets and more
than 90 people were detained, the interior ministry said.

– ‘Strong when united’ –

Tikhanovskaya, a 37-year-old political novice, urged supporters
to turn up for Sunday’s “March of Unity” set to begin at 1100
GMT.

“Remember we are strong as long as we are united,” she said in a
short video address.

Tikhanovskaya contested the election after her blogger husband
was jailed and barred from running along with several other
prominent Lukashenko critics.

She left Belarus under pressure from authorities and took
shelter in EU member Lithuania.

On Friday, Tikhanovskaya addressed a meeting of the UN Security
Council by video link, calling for sanctions against those
responsible for the alleged electoral fraud and rights
violations.

The Baltic nations of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia have
blacklisted Lukashenko and 29 high-ranking officials in his
administration but other members of the EU bloc appear reluctant to
target the Belarus strongman personally.

Russia has said it will respond to any Western attempts to “sway
the situation” and President Vladimir Putin has raised the
possibility of sending military support.

Putin has been keen to unify Russia and Belarus, and Moscow has
accompanied its recent offers of economic and military aid with
calls for tighter integration.

Lukashenko has in the past ruled out outright unification and
sought to play Moscow against the West but his options now are
limited.

On Thursday, Lukashenko hosted Russian Prime Minister Mikhail
Mishustin and replaced the chief of the KGB security service in
what some analysts said might have been done under pressure from
Moscow.

The moustachioed leader said Russia and Belarus had agreed on
issues they “could not agree earlier” and he planned to “dot all
the i’s” with Putin in Moscow in the next few weeks.

Lukashenko made headlines when he claimed during a meeting with
Mishustin that his security forces had intercepted German calls
showing that Putin foe Alexei Navalny’s poisoning with a Soviet-era
Novichok nerve agent had been faked.

Belarusian state television broadcast the “intercept” in which a
Mike in Warsaw and Nick in Berlin discuss Navalny’s materials and
call Lukashenko a “tough nut to crack.”

Social media in Russia went berserk in mocking the Belarus
leader and even some staunchly pro-Kremlin propagandists expressed
embarassment.

Lukashenko also raised eyebrows last month when he brandished an
assault rifle and had his 15-year-old son Nikolai appear next to
him in a bulletproof vest while also weilding a weapon.

Some observers say Lukashenko wanted to curry favour with Moscow
but was becoming a liability.

“No one knows what intercept Alexander Grigoryevich (Lukashenko)
will record and publish tomorrow and where he will run with an
assault rifle,” wrote Kirill Martynov, politics editor at
independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta.

AFP

Read more https://swordpress.com.ng/2020/09/06/belarus-protesters-keep-pressure-on-lukashenko-with-new-march/

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