Women rally against vote, crackdown
MINSK, Belarus — Hundreds of women rallied across Belarus’ capital Wednesday to protest a brutal police crackdown that left hundreds injured and thousands detained while challenging election results extending the 26year rule of the country’s authoritarian leader.
In several parts of Minsk, groups of women formed human chains, chanting “Shame!” and calling for an end to the crackdown in a bid to soften the ruthless official response to peaceful protests. Hesitant to use force against allwomen rallies, police dispersed them without violence.
Protesters are contesting the official count showing President Alexander Lukashenko winning a sixth term with 80% of Sunday’s vote and the main opposition challenger with 10%. Crowds have taken to the streets every night since to demand a recount.
Authorities have responded with a crackdown that was unusually brutal even for Lukashenko’s authoritarian rule. Police have dispersed protesters with tear gas, stun grenades, water cannons and rubber bullets and severely beat them with truncheons. Blackuniformed officers chased protesters into residential buildings and deliberately targeted journalists, beating many and breaking their cameras.
“We stand for a peaceful protest,” said Ksenia Ilyashevich, a 23yearold IT specialist who joined other women at a Minsk protest Wednesday. “We stand here for all.”
Another demonstrator, 29yearold Lyudmila Arutyunova, said: “We need to support each other when the authorities beat us.”
In three nights of protests, at least 6,000 people have been detained and hundreds injured, according to the official count, but even that high toll appeared to downplay the crackdown’s scope. Anguished relatives were besieging prisons across Belarus trying to find their missing relatives.
“Even those who were loyal saw the real face of this government during the past three days,” said 63yearold Galina Vitushko, who stood outside a jail in Minsk, trying to find her son, a 43year old doctor.
“It’s a real harassment, how can you treat your own people like that?” she asked, breaking into tears. “The real winners don’t behave like that.”
Lukashenko, 65, has led the former Soviet state of 9.5 million people with an iron fist since 1994, relentlessly stifling dissent and winning the nickname “Europe’s last dictator” in the West.