Police in Belarus arrested protest and strike organisers yesterday as authorities cracked down on opposition leaders after the latest unprecedented demonstration against President Alexander Lukashenko’s disputed re-election.
The detentions came as a top US diplomat met with opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya in Lithuania and after tens of thousands took part in some of the largest protests in the country’s recent history for a second Sunday in a row.
Tikhanovskaya fled to neighbouring Lithuania after August 9 polls that she claims to have won against Lukashenko.
His insistence on his own landslide victory and police violence against demonstrators have sparked huge protests against his rule.
The opposition said two members of its Co-ordination Council were detained yesterday: Sergei Dylevsky, a tractor plant worker who has come to prominence as a strike leader and Olga Kovalkova, a member of Tikhanovskaya’s staff.
Allies of Tikhanovskaya formed the Co-ordination Council this month to oversee efforts for a peaceful transition of power.
Its members include Nobel Prize-winning author and outspoken Lukashenko critic Svetlana Alexievich and former arts minister Pavel Latushko.
“We are under pressure. This morning two members of the presidium of the Co-ordination Council were detained,” another presidium member, Liliya Vlasova, said at a press conference.
Vlasova, a lawyer and mediator, said Dylevsky and Kovalkova were accused of illegally organising a strike, an administrative violation.
A mobile phone video by a witness posted by news site Tut.by apparently showed Dylevsky and Kovalkova being led to a police van, watched by uniformed workers from the tractor plant.
“We consider these actions of the authorities are absolutely unlawful,” Vlasova said, adding: “We are negotiators.”
Vlasova said that investigators had also summoned her for questioning later.
In the industrial city of Soligorsk, police detained a strike leader at the Belaruskaly potash plant, Anatoly Bokun, and another, Alexander Lavrinovich, at the MZKT plant, which makes heavy-duty trucks, factory workers told AFP.
The strike leaders were taken to police stations.
US Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun met Tikhanovskaya in Lithuania, calling her a “very impressive person”.
He condemned “the violation of human rights and brutality that we’ve seen play out in Belarus”, saying that Belarusians must “determine their own future”.
Tikhanovskaya said Lukashenko “does not have the support either of the Belarusian people or the international community”.
Visiting Ukraine, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas also called for Lukashenko “not to resort to violence, to respect the rights of the protesters”.
The Kremlin said that President Vladimir Putin had spoken by phone with Lukashenko yesterday, the latest in a series of calls between the two leaders, whose countries are closely linked.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov praised protesters for lack of “provocations” and said law enforcement behaved “very appropriately” during Sunday’s demonstration.
While police did not crack down at the time, the opposition warned yesterday that anyone who took part could potentially be detained.
In a sign of the peril to an already shaky economy, several banking sources told Reuters that most banks had effectively run out of foreign currency to meet surging demand from residents trying to sell the local Belarusian rouble.
Queues have become common at exchange points.
A board member at the Belarus central bank told Reuters the issue was a technical one involving the physical availability of banknotes, and did not signal liquidity problems.
Dmitry Murin told Reuters that any shortage of foreign currency at exchange points “has a technical nature – there is an issue with physical availability of the banknotes. Banks do not have forex liquidity shortages as of now”.
from Gulf Times https://ift.tt/3gl9Yao
Comments
Post a Comment