More Protests Set For Minsk As Belarusian Opposition Pressures Lukashenka

MINSK — Opposition demonstrators are girding for more protests in the Belarusian capital as they press their efforts to get President Alyaksandr Lukashenka to resign, nearly a month after he was declared the winner of disputed presidential vote.

Opposition groups are hoping the September 6 demonstration will draw crowds comparable to past weekends, when tens of thousands of people marched through Minsk and confronted riot police.

Lukashenka, who has ruled the country for 26 years, has refused to hold talks with his opponents, and rebuffed calls to hold new elections.

He claims to have won the August 9 elections with over 80 percent of the vote, something his opponents and outside observers say is false.

Opposition groups are also calling for the release of political prisoners and for an independent investigation of the police crackdown that swept up thousands in the days after the election.

Meanwhile, the country’s leading opposition figure, Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya, said her country was in “deep political crisis.”

“Belarusians have changed, they have woken up,” she said in a live stream on September 5 from Vilnius, where she fled in the days after the vote.

The people of Belarus “don’t believe in the current government anymore.” She said that it was “impossible to force people to back down.”

The postelection demonstrations are the greatest challenge to date for Lukashenka.

On September 5, two unsanctioned rallies organized separately by university students and women’s groups took place in Minsk. News agencies reported that dozens of students were dragged from the streets and pushed into vans by masked security agents.

Interfax quoted a police representative as saying that 25 students were later released, while nine others remained in detention.

Crisis In Belarus

Read our coverage as Belarusians take to the streets to demand the resignation of President Alyaksandr Lukashenka and call for new elections after official results from the August 9 presidential poll gave Lukashenka a landslide victory.

The protests have not been limited to Minsk. Several hundred people rallied in the southern city of Homel on September 5, and police detained at least two protest participants.

Tsikhanouskaya was scheduled to visit Warsaw this week to hold meetings with top Polish officials.

A top Tsikhanouskaya aide told reporters in Warsaw on September 5 that she had been forced to leave Belarus by authorities.

Volha Kovalkova said she was made to lie down on the floor of an intelligence service car driving her to the border, where she was released. She managed to board a Polish bus after the driver recognized her.

“Everything that happened these past days and weeks I consider as torture. They threatened me with lengthy detention several times,” Kovalkova said.

With reporting by Reuters, Interfax, and AFP