After vote that many called rigged, challenger to leader of Belarus leaves
MINSK, BELARUS
The main opponent of Alexander Lukashenko, the embattled president of Belarus, left the country Tuesday, and violent skirmishes between police and protesters continued as the man known as “Europe’s last dictator” clung to power.
Svetlana G. Tikhanovskaya, who ran for president in Sunday’s election after the jailing of her husband, an opposition blogger, was pressured to depart for Lithuania by Belarusian authorities, two of her associates said.
In a video that was released Tuesday and in which she appeared to have recorded under duress, Tikhanovskaya read from a prepared text calling on Belarusians not to resist police or to protest in public squares in order “not to put your lives at risk.”
“I made this decision absolutely independently,” Tikhanovskaya said in another cryptic video message Tuesday. “I know that many will understand me, many will judge me and many will hate me for it.
But know that God forbid you will face the kind of choice that I faced.”
Many Belarusians who have been protesting against Lukashenko, the authoritarian who has ruled the Eastern European country for 26 years, did not heed her call for calm.
Protests erupted after polls closed in the country’s presidential election, in which Lukashenko claimed victory in a landslide, and have turned into the biggest anti-government demonstrations in the country’s post-Soviet history. Critics believe Sunday’s vote was blatantly rigged.
Still, there were signs Tuesday that the protests were losing momentum in the face of a fierce police response. Social-media accounts backing the protests had urged a general strike Tuesday, but while some work stoppages were reported, they were not widespread.
Clashes between protesters and police continued for a third consecutive evening, though there were fewer people in the streets than during the previous nights. The demonstrators who remained appeared increasingly prepared for violent confrontation.
A woman fights with a police officer as another officer detains a protester in Minsk, Belarus, on Tuesday.
With much of the city center cordoned off — and with internet access limited, making it difficult to organize protests — the focal points of the demonstrations moved to residential neighborhoods on the outskirts of Minsk, the capital.
Elite police units have combed residential neighborhoods, entering apartment buildings and detaining people. Journalists continued to be targeted, and several photographers had their memory cards confiscated.
Belarusian authorities said Tuesday that 2,000 people had been detained across the country the previous night and that 21 law-enforcement and military personnel had been injured. One person died in those clashes after an explosive device detonated in his hand, officials said.
A protest site in central Minsk turned into a makeshift memorial Tuesday,
with hundreds of people bringing flowers and passing cars honking in support. Riot police were deployed to the scene.
“I will come out to protest until the end,” said Yelena Kolomytskaya, 47, who works in sales and brought flowers.