Third night of protests by Belarusians
Thousands of Belarusians demonstrated in a central Minsk square for the third night in a row tonight, swelling the ranks of a core group who spent the previous night there to protest at the extension of authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko’s rule.
Opposition leader Alexander Milinkevich, who has denounced as a fraud the election that gave Lukashenko a new five-year term and called for a new vote, urged demonstrators to keep up daily protests and called for a major show of strength on Saturday.
“Come here every day to speak of freedom,” Milinkevich said, speaking in the light from TV cameras after Oktyabrskaya Square was plunged into darkness, adding to protesters’ concerns of a crackdown by security forces.
“We will stay here until the 25th, and on the 25th we will gather here to fight for our future,” he said.
Saturday is the anniversary of the declaration of independence of the first, short-lived Belarusian republic in 1918, and a traditional day for Lukashenko’s opponents to hold protests.
“The authorities want to destroy this small city of freedom,” Milinkevich said, speaking as the crowd grew on the third night of protests but fell far short of some 10,000 who gathered at the initial rally on election night Sunday.
“We will not let them do it.”
The rally centred on an encampment of about 15 tents set up by young protesters on Monday night in an attempt to lay the groundwork for round-the-clock actions resembling Ukraine’s 2004 Orange Revolution which forced a re-run of a fraudulent presidential election.
Milinkevich spoke shortly after ambassadors from European Union countries including Britain, France, Latvia and Lithuania visited the tent camp to show support for opponents of a leader branded a dictator by the West.
International observers have said the vote was neither free nor fair, and Europe’s main human rights organisation said it was a “farce”. The US has called for a new election.
Police have harassed people entering the square but made no move to crack down on the unprecedented protest in this former Soviet republic sandwiched between Russia and the expanded EU.
According to the official count, Lukashenko, a former collective farm director who has been in power for 12 years, won Sunday’s election with nearly 83% of the vote. Popular among many Belarusians for providing economic and political stability, his victory had been expected.
But Milinkevich, the main opposition candidate, denounced the result as “monstrously inflated” and called for a new vote.
He said in an interview that Lukashenko should be excluded from the re-run of presidential elections.
“We are demanding a repeat election without the participation of Lukashenko. For us, this is very important. He does not have the constitutional right” to run again, Milinkevich said. He was referring to a referendum – denounced by the opposition as rigged – that abolished term-limits for the president, opening the way for Lukashenko to stand again.
The opposition is trying to mimic techniques that worked in Belarus’s southern neighbour, Ukraine, where the Orange Revolution brought opposition leaders to power. But in Ukraine crowds of 100,000 or more jammed the centre of the capital for weeks in December 2004, forcing a re-run of a flawed presidential election.
