MINSK — Belarusian authorities have stepped up detentions of prominent protest organizers and summoned others as the Defense Ministry announced that some units of the Belarusian armed forces will be placed on full alert and reservists are being mobilized.
The latest crackdown follows a weekend that saw signs that five-term President Alyaksandr Lukashenka was increasingly determined to stay in power despite public anger that drew at least 100,000 anti-government demonstrators in Minsk on August 23.
Lukashenka has ordered the military into full combat readiness, raising the prospect that the army may unleash a much-feared bloody crackdown to suppress the unprecedented wave of street protests across the country.
The Defense Ministry said in a statement on August 24 that reservists were being mobilized as parts of the military were placed on high alert in what was described as the third stage of checking the army’s readiness.
“The third stage of the comprehensive inspection of the armed forces’ combat readiness began on August 24 at the behest of the defense minister of Belarus and is led by the chief of the General Staff. The inspection will involve putting certain military units in the highest degree of combat readiness with a call-up of reservists,” the ministry in a statement.
The Belarusian military has reportedly been conducting a large-scale tactical exercise in the Hrodna region, near the border with Lithuania.
Meanwhile, Nobel Prize-winning writer Svetlana Alexievich, 72, became the latest member of a Coordination Council for an exiled presidential challenger who insists this month’s election was rigged to be targeted in the crackdown.
The ailing Alexievich said after the August 9 vote that “the authorities have declared war on their people.”
She has now been summoned to appear before Belarus’s Investigative Committee on August 26 as a witness in a criminal case on the establishment of Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya’s Coordination Council, a spokesman for the council said.
An aide for a disqualified presidential hopeful, Viktar Babaryka, who was jailed before the election, told RFE/RL that Alexievich’s health had prevented her from taking part in the council’s work.
However, she was said to be in contact with the group.
Earlier on August 24, authorities detained two members of Tsikhanouskaya’s Coordination Council outside of a tractor factory in Minsk.
The Coordination Council said Volha Kovalkova, a top aide of Tsikhanouskaya, and strike organizer Syarhey Dyleuski were detained early on August 24 and accused of attempting to organize an unauthorized protest rally at the Minsk Tractor Works (MTZ).
The 30-year-old Dyleuski is a worker at the tractor factory whose outspoken criticism of Lukashenka has attracted international media attention as well as pressure from Belarusian police.
Kovalkova’s associate, Dzyanis Sadouski, told RFE/RL police informed the Coordination Council that the two were detained as part of an “administrative” case against them, and that they would most likely be fined.
Another member of the opposition Coordination Council, attorney Lilia Vlasova, was summoned to Investigative Committee headquarters on August 24 for questioning.
More than 100,000 demonstrators packed the streets of the Belarusian capital on August 23 in a mass rally against Lukashenka — the latest in more than two weeks of protests against an official presidential election tally that showed Lukashenka winning reelection by a landslide.
The protests have been growing in size amid a brutal postelection crackdown by Belarusian authorities and a heavy security presence in Minsk, with fresh warnings being issued to protesters during the weekend by the Belarusian Army.
In a sign of widening international support for the democracy movement in Belarus, the Czech government on August 24 opened a 400,000-euro ($470,000) solidarity fund.
Foreign Minister Tomas Petricek said the Czech people wanted to provide practical help.
“The Belarusians should be given the right to decide freely about their future,” Petricek said.
The money is intended to benefit people who have been victims of violence or torture or who have lost their jobs because they participated in the protests.
With reporting by Current Time, Reuters, AP, TASS, Interfax, The New York Times, dpa, and AFP
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Radio Free | Radio Free (2020-08-25T06:01:19+00:00) Belarus Moblizes Reservists As Police Round Up Opposition Activists. Retrieved from https://www.radiofree.org/2020/08/25/belarus-moblizes-reservists-as-police-round-up-opposition-activists/
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