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CJ Cregg
Commodore
Joined: 05 Oct 2002
Posts: 1254
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 Fri Mar 24, 2006 10:27 am Belarus "Elections" Thread |
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| Quote: | Belarus police storm protest vigil
MINSK, Belarus (AP) -- Police stormed the opposition tent camp in the Belarusian capital early Friday morning, detaining hundreds of demonstrators who had spent a fourth night in a central square to protest President Alexander Lukashenko's victory in a disputed election.
The arrests came after a half dozen large police trucks and around 100 helmeted riot police with clubs pulled up to Oktyabrskaya Square in central Minsk about 3 a.m. (2300 GMT Thursday). The police stood around for a few minutes and then barged into the tent camp filled with protesters.
They first wrestled about 50 resisting demonstrators into the trucks. The rest of the 200-300 demonstrators then filed into the trucks quietly, seeing that the end had come for the days-long protest that was unprecedented in the authoritarian ex-Soviet state.
Journalists were kept about 20 meters away behind police lines, and it was unclear whether police gave protesters a chance to disperse on their own before they were arrested and bundled into the trucks.
The police had long truncheons, but were not seen beating demonstrators, as they had done often when breaking up smaller opposition rallies in past years. One local journalist said she saw police kick a few demonstrators who fell as they were being hustled into the truck.
By the end of the 10-15 minute operation, all of the protesters had been taken away, leaving only the remains of their encampment -- about 20 backpacker-type tents, blankets, thermoses, refuse and several of the red-and-white flags that the demonstrators had waved. The flags were post-Soviet Belarus' official standard, but under Lukashenko they were scrapped for a flag restoring Soviet-era designs.
City workers soon began throwing the remains of the camp into dump trucks, aided by two bulldozers scooping up debris. A stray dog wandered in during the operation and scrounged for food in what was left of the camp.
The United States, a persistently harsh critic of Lukashenko, was quick to denounce the police raid.
"As we have said before we condemn all acts by the government of Belarus to deprive the citizens of that country of their right to peacefully express their views," said State Department spokeswoman Janelle Hironimus.
Police had been detaining opposition supporters and keeping would-be protesters away from the square since Monday night, when demonstrators set up the first tents. The protests began with a rally of more than 10,000 people on Sunday, the day of the election, and about 5,000 came to a second protest on Monday, when a core group decided to make the protests around-the-clock.
A top police official earlier in the week had said there was no intention to disperse the demonstration and it was not immediately clear what prompted the decision for the pre-dawn storming. An annual television awards ceremony is to be held Friday evening at the hulking Palace of the Republic that borders the square and the sight of the scruffy tent camp near the gala would have been an embarrassment to the government.
The raid left in doubt the prospects for the opposition forces who had rallied behind presidential candidate Alexander Milinkevich, who wanted a rerun of the election without the participation of Lukashenko, whose election he contends was unconstitutional because he was allowed to run for a third term after an allegedly fraudulent referendum in 2004 abolished presidential term limits.
"The authorities are destroying freedom, truth and justice. There was only enough democracy for three days and this shows the essence of the regime that has been established in Belarus," Milinkevich told The Associated Press after the storming.
Their action followed his warning Thursday that increased persecution would only strengthen protests against the authoritarian government.
"The people on the square were courageous," Milinkevich said, speaking while on his way to a jail where detainees were taken. "They got up off their knees and together with them all of Belarus stood up."
Despite that, the number of protesters had never risen to the level that was likely to force change, as happened in post-election protests in the ex-Soviet countries of Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan where opposition leaders eventually came to power.
On Thursday, Milinkevich had said he planned to announce "the long-term plans of the opposition" at what was intended to be a major demonstration on Saturday, the anniversary of Belarus' first independence declaration in 1918 and a traditional rallying day for the opposition.
He had been widely expected to call for an end to the protest encampment and speculation was high that he would undertake a door-to-door opposition petition drive in the country of 10 million. He told AP early Friday that he would continue to call for a rally on Saturday.
The Central Election Commission released final election results Thursday saying Lukashenko received 83 percent of the vote and Milinkevich just 6.1 percent.
The commission chief, Lidiya Yermoshina, said the inauguration would take place March 31, but its secretary Nikolai Lozovik told The Associated Press that date was tentative and the ceremony would probably be held later.
Lukashenko is genuinely popular with many Belarusians who credit him with providing economic and political stability. But Milinkevich says Lukashenko's official tally is inflated and is calling for a new vote.
A top trans-Atlantic democracy and security body said Thursday it had information about more than 200 detentions in the three days following the election, and called on the authorities to release everyone detained in connection with the peaceful protest.
"The Belarusian authorities must immediately put an end to the persecution of their opponents," the chairman-in-office of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Karel de Gucht, said in a statement.
Also Thursday, the Foreign Ministry lashed out a repeated U.S. criticism of the elections.
"The people of Belarus have made their choice and it's absolutely irrelevant here whether the United States likes this choice or not," ministry spokesman Andrei Popov said in a statement.
Lukashenko claims the opposition is supported by Western forces seeking to bring him down.
Milinkevich said one of those detained in the pre-dawn raid was a former Polish ambassador to Belarus, Marjusz Maszkewicz. At the jail, Polish Consul Krzysztof Swiderek said there were Polish citizens being held but that authorities would not let him in or give him any information.
On Thursday, Milinkevich said assailants had attacked and seriously injured a top aide after state television broadcast what it claimed was a recorded conversation in which the aide received advice from a Polish NGO, the Batory Foundation, on protest strategies.
Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. |
| Quote: | West slams Belarus crackdown
MINSK, Belarus (CNN) -- Western leaders have agreed to impose restrictive measures on the Belarussian government as they condemned a crackdown against opposition protesters in Minsk.
But while Friday's forced removal by police of about 200 demonstrators from the center of the capital Minsk sparked criticism by the European Union and United States, Russia accused an international security organization of instigating tensions during the election campaign.
The demonstrators, led by a political opposition that plans to hold a mass rally on Saturday, want a re-run of the election that gave President Alexander Lukashenko five more years in power. The opposition says the poll was rigged.
In a declaration at the end of a summit in Brussels on Friday, all 25 European leaders agreed, declaring the March 19 presidential vote "fundamentally flawed."
Austrian Foreign Minister Ursula Plassnik gave no details but Reuters reported EU officials as saying the measures being considered were visa bans on those accused of allegedly rigging the poll, and possible asset freezes, but not economic sanctions against the former Soviet republic.
"On a continent of open and democratic societies, Belarus is a sad exception," the EU leaders said in a statement.
The leaders are calling for the immediate release of detained protesters "for exercising their freedom of assembly and expression."
They welcome what it calls "the message of hope brought by Belarus' democratic opposition and civil society.
"Their continuing and brave efforts to advance the cause of democracy in exceptionally difficult circumstances deserve our full recognition and support."
The United States also said it planned to impose financial sanctions and travel restrictions against Belarus officials to show its opposition to the government's crackdown on protesters, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said on Friday.
"We strongly condemn the actions by Belarussian security services," Reuters reported McClellan as saying.
He praised a statement by the European Council against those in Belarus who violated international standards including Lukashenko. "We plan to take parallel steps involving targeted travel restrictions and financial sanctions," he said.
The election result has set the U.S. and other Western countries at odds with Russia. Washington, echoing the findings of international poll monitors, has accused Lukashenko of intimidating opponents while Moscow has congratulated him.
"We are disturbed by the break-up of demonstrations and the detention of protestors in Belarus," U.S. State Department spokeswoman Janelle Hironimus said in a statement in Washington, Reuters reported.
CNN's European Political Editor Robin Oakley said a war of words was threatening to escalate over Belarus as Russia criticized the West for stirring up the protests in the wake of peaceful revolutions in former Soviet bloc countries.
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov's comments were the first from Moscow since the protests were smashed.
"Long before the elections, the OSCE's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights had declared that they (the elections) would be illegitimate and it was pretty biased in its commentaries on their progress and results, thus playing an instigating role," the Interfax news agency quoted Lavrov as saying. (Full story)
The OSCE's observer mission said Sunday's election did not meet standards for a free and fair vote.
"Arbitrary use of state power and widespread detentions showed a disregard for the basic rights of freedom of assembly, association and expression," the OSCE mission said.
OSCE assessments that found recent elections in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan seriously flawed were key factors in galvanizing protests that brought opposition leaders to power. Lukashenko claims that similar demonstrations are being prepared in Belarus with foreign backing.
'Language of force'
The opposition, who were holding emergency meetings on Friday morning, vowed Saturday's big protest would go ahead. Main opposition leader Alexander Milinkevich, who was not among those detained, planned to hold a news conference.
Five days of protests in October Square, in which numbers have ranged from 200 to several thousand, are rare as police in tightly controlled Belarus usually clamp down on dissent.
"The authorities...only know the language of force," main opposition leader Alexander Milinkevich, who has spearheaded the peaceful resistance, told reporters, his voice breaking, according to Reuters.
Dozens of police surrounded the protesters in the makeshift tent camp and told them to disperse. Protesters refused.
Minutes later, police forcibly carried about 10 of them to trucks. Other demonstrators followed without resisting.
State television made a point of quoting city police saying no one was hurt in the operation. An officer in command urged his men not to use excessive force, reports said.
The protests had echoes of the 2004 "Orange Revolution" that produced weeks of mass protests in neighboring Ukraine, but the crowds were far smaller.
Some observers said the relatively gentle treatment of demonstrators suggested Lukashenko may be trying to react more sensitively given Western opinion.
Others said he may have come under pressure from Russian President Vladimir Putin to avoid police brutality.
Those arrested seemed likely to get jail sentences of up to two weeks for public order offences.
Lukashenko won Sunday's elections with an official vote tally of 83 percent. Milinkevich came second with 6 percent.
Despite his pariah status in the West, Lukashenko is popular among Belarussians, Reuters said, for having ensured relative political and economic stability.
Copyright 2006 CNN. All rights reserved |
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CJ Cregg
Commodore
Joined: 05 Oct 2002
Posts: 1254
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| Fri Mar 24, 2006 10:28 am |
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I hope the EU and western world will impose more sanctions on "Europe's last dictatorship"
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Jeremy
J's Guy
Joined: 03 Oct 2002
Posts: 7823
Location: Aberdeen, Scotland
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| Fri Mar 24, 2006 3:54 pm |
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Is more sanctions the answer? Or would it be the people that suffer?
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CJ Cregg
Commodore
Joined: 05 Oct 2002
Posts: 1254
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| Sat Mar 25, 2006 7:59 am |
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| Quote: | Belarus protests take to streets
Tensions are high in Belarus' capital Minsk as several thousand protesters defied police attempts to prevent a rally over a disputed election.
Protesters moved in to the main streets after special forces closed off October Square, the site of a tented protest camp cleared away by police on Friday.
Several hundred police in full riot gear have been pushing back the crowd.
But the protesters, many of whom chanted "Shame" and "Long Live Belarus", moved to a nearby park.
"The more the authorities conduct repression, the closer they bring themselves to their end," opposition leader Alexander Milinkevich told the crowd in Yanka Kupala park.
Earlier, police used megaphones to tell protesters that October Square was closed while diggers cleared away ice from the area.
Prison trucks, ambulances and vehicles carrying police reinforcements were spotted down nearby side streets.
Security forces began hemming protesters into groups and pushing them away from the square.
At one point some protesters stopped the traffic but were quickly swooped on by the police.
The atmosphere is tense but there have been no reports of violence, correspondents say.
'Police beatings'
Saturday's demonstration was timed to coincide with the anniversary of the declaration of independence of the short-lived Belarussian republic in 1918.
A five-day sit-in protest in October Square by opposition supporters was broken up by the security forces early on Friday.
Several hundred demonstrators were arrested, with some claiming they were beaten as they were transported to detention centres.
Police "beat those who were the most active and those who were resisting," one high school student told the Associated Press, claiming he was punched in the legs and the back of his head.
'Travel restrictions'
International monitors have strongly criticised last Sunday's poll that saw President Alexander Lukashenko take 82.6% of the vote, securing his third seven-year term in office.
Belarus insists Mr Lukashenko's win was fair.
Russia has not criticised the election and accused the OCSE, which monitored the election, of inflaming tensions.
White House press spokesman Scott McClellan said on Friday that the Bush administration would apply additional "targeted sanctions" against some governmental officials.
No time frame was given, but the sanctions are expected to take the form of travel restrictions and some financial penalties.
Earlier, EU leaders issued a declaration saying that the bloc would "take restrictive measures against those responsible for the violation of international electoral standards".
The measures have yet to be agreed, but EU officials said they would probably include a travel ban against Mr Lukashenko. |
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CJ Cregg
Commodore
Joined: 05 Oct 2002
Posts: 1254
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| Sat Mar 25, 2006 4:31 pm |
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I hope the good people of Belarus rise up and overthrow their oppressive government. Keep protesting people!
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