Opposition defiant as police end Belarus protests

By Andrei Makhovsky

MINSK (Reuters) – Belarussian President Alexander
Lukashenko’s riot police on Friday broke up days of street
protests over his re-election, but the opposition, undeterred,
said it would go ahead with a weekend rally against him.

Police wearing riot helmets and carrying batons swooped in
the early hours on around 200 demonstrators camped out in
Minsk’s October Square and drove them off in trucks.

They were taken to a detention center pending trial.

The demonstrators were pressing for a re-run of the March
19 poll which handed Lukashenko five more years in power in the
ex-Soviet state that he rules with an iron grip. The opposition
says the poll was blatantly rigged.

The United States and the European Union issued separate
statements saying they planned to impose restrictions on
Belarus, including a travel ban, in the wake of the election.

Despite the arrests, opposition leader Alexander
Milinkevich said Lukashenko’s foes would not be deterred from
holding a peaceful rally — also unauthorized — on Saturday as
planned.

“We have scheduled the rally for (March) 25th and we will
hold it on the 25th no matter what,” said Milinkevich, adding
that demonstrators would avoid any violent clashes with police.

If authorities sealed off October Square, where the rally
is set for 1000 GMT, protesters would move to a different
location which he refused to disclose.

It was not immediately clear what support Milinkevich could
expect for the demonstration, which will also mark the
independence day of a short-lived Belarussian republic in 1918.

Lukashenko won the election with an official tally of 83
percent to 6 for Milinkevich. Numbers turning out to protest
against the poll varied from several thousand to a few hundred.

Dissent is normally quashed quickly in the tightly-policed
ex-Soviet state. But authorities have handled these protests
with comparative tolerance and police may simply divert
protesters away from the city center and avoid confrontation.

CONDMENATION IN WEST, SYMPATHY IN MOSCOW

Friday’s police action drew condemnation from the West, but
sympathy from Russia, Lukashenko’s big backer.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan condemned the
detentions and said Washington planned to impose financial
sanctions and travel restrictions against Belarus.

Austrian Foreign Minister Ursula Plassnik, whose country
currently holds the European Union presidency, said the EU had
decided to take “restrictive measures” against those linked to
the vote, including Lukashenko.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe
(OSCE) denounced Lukashenko’s re-election as flawed, but Russia
accused it of playing an “inflammatory role” in Belarus.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov defended the police
action as restrained. “I would not call what I saw on
television a forced dispersal of people or say that there was a
use of force,” he said, according to Interfax news agency.

“I don’t think that the protesters asked for permission to
have such a meeting in accordance with the law.”

Lukashenko, in power since 1994, has been branded Europe’s
last dictator by the United States and is shunned by Western
governments because of his Soviet-style policies at home.

Though President Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin is not
comfortable with Lukashenko’s style, it wants to protect its
sphere of influence in the old Soviet Union, eroded by
revolutions in Ukraine and Georgia that brought pro-Western
leaders to power.

In the early morning operation, dozens of police surrounded
the protesters at a makeshift tent camp and told them to
disperse. Those who refused were forcibly carried into trucks,
while other demonstrators followed without resisting.

Opposition activists later said 10 demonstrators had been
jailed for up to 15 days after court hearings got under way.

State television made a point of quoting city police saying
no-one was hurt in the operation. An officer in command urged
his men through a loudhailer not to use excessive force.

Some observers said Putin, unwilling to be associated with
violence in Belarus during his chairmanship of the G8 group of
wealthy nations, may have applied pressure on Lukashenko to
ensure a minimum of force was used.

(Additional reporting by Oleg Shchedrov)