Meeting force with hugs
Minsk demonstrators denounce presidential election as rigged
MOSCOW — After waves of postelection protests in Belarus against the authoritarian rule of President Alexander Lukashenko, the opposition appeared to get a boost Friday as its self-exiled leader called for rallies in every corner of the country.
Svetlana Tikhanovskaya — whose campaign said she was pressured into leaving the country earlier in the week — resurfaced in a video from Lithuania calling for peaceful weekend protests “in every city.”
She later announced the formation of a council to ensure the transition of power if Lukashenko were toppled and to “restore the rule of law in Belarus,” she said in a statement.
Demonstrators flooded the heart of the Belarus capital of Minsk on Friday in a show of anger over a brutal police crackdown this week on protesters, and authorities sought to ease rising public fury by freeing at least 2,000 who were jailed after earlier demonstrations.
Factory workers marched across the city shouting “Go away!” in a call for authoritarian Lukashenko to resign after 26 years of iron-fisted rule that was extended in an election Sunday that protesters denounced as rigged.
Friday’s crowds grew to more than 20,000, filling central Independence Square.
About a dozen soldiers guarding the nearby government headquarters lowered their riot shields in what the demonstrators saw as a sign of solidarity, and women rushed to embrace and kiss the guards.
As the protesters rallied on the square, Lukashenko dismissed them as puppets manipulated from abroad.
He told officials, however, to avoid excessive force. “If a person falls down and lies still, don’t beat him!” Lukashenko said.
The release by the Interior Ministry of about 2,000 of the nearly 7,000 people detained was seen as another move to defuse popular outrage. It said more would be freed.
Many who were released spoke of brutal beatings and
other abuse by police, and some showed bruises on their bodies. Some of them wept as they embraced waiting relatives.
The European Union, meanwhile, agreed to start the process of imposing sanctions against Belarusian officials involved in the crackdown.
Lukashenko, who has ruled Belarus since 1994, claimed he easily won over Tikhanovskaya in an election Sunday in which the result has been widely denounced as rigged.
In a message that the regime is refusing to capitulate, the Central Elections Commission announced its final election results: Roughly 80 percent of the vote went to Lukashenko. Tikhanovskaya, a surprise opposition candidate after her activist husband was arrested, received about 10 percent, according to the state count.
“The authorities are taking their own people hostage,” said Lithuanian Foreign Minister Linas Linkevicius, whose country is sheltering Tikhanovskaya after she fled Belarus early Tuesday. “Aggression always instigates aggressive resistance. And if people previously were calmed down many times, no one knows how big is the threshold this time.”
Linkevicius said Tikhanovskaya was pressured by Belarusian authorities into leaving the country after an hours-long meeting at the Central Elections Commission late Monday.
Then the next day, Tikhanovskaya released an emotional video saying she “made a very difficult decision” and “God forbid you face such a choice that I had to face.” In a second video, released roughly an hour later that appeared to be taped from inside the Central Elections Commission building, Tikhanovskaya read a prepared statement that asked her supporters to stop protesting and said, “The people of Belarus have made their choice” in the election.
Tikhanovskaya’s supporters believe that statement was coerced. On Friday, she reasserted that independent vote counts indicated much higher support than in the state election figures.
“In districts where the commissions counted honestly, my support stands at 60-70 percent, and even at 90 percent” in one Minsk neighborhood, she said in the video.
“We’ve always said that our choice should be protected only by legal, nonviolent methods, while the authorities have turned citizens’ peaceful protests into bloodshed,” she added.
In what appeared to be a gesture toward Moscow, Belarus said it released 32 men the country said were Russian mercenaries who were sent to incite riots ahead of the election.
The group, arrested in late July, were believed to be part of the Russian paramilitary Wagner outfit, security analysts have said. They added that it was likely the men were using Minsk as a transit hub to Africa — a common practice that would have been cleared with authorities in Belarus.
Belarus initially announced 33 men were taken into custody. The reason for the discrepancy in the numbers was not immediately clear.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, during a visit to Europe this week, has not specified any possible U.S. response to the Belarus election and unrest. Washington restored diplomatic relations with Minsk for the first time since 2008 and signed a deal to sell oil to Belarus earlier this year.