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Opposition defiant as police end Belarus protests

Posted on: Friday, 24 March 2006, 10:06 CST

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)

Source: REUTERS

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