Strikers demand ouster of president
KYIV, Ukraine — Factory workers, students and business owners in Belarus on Monday began a strike to demand that authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko resign after more than two months of continuing mass protests following a disputed election.
Most staterun enterprises continued to operate despite the strike, which was called by opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya. But analysts said it helped mobilize opposition supporters for a new round of confrontation with authorities, which poses a significant challenge for Lukashenko, who has run the country for 26 years and until recently has been able to successfully stifle dissent.
Students in some universities refused to attend lectures and marched in Minsk in protest. Hundreds of small private companies declared Monday a nonworking day, and shops and cafes closed, with their owners and employees forming human chains all over the capital.
Several divisions of large plants in Minsk said they were halting work, and employees of two plants in the western city of Grodno gathered in front of buildings there.
The authorities responded by detaining protesters in the streets and outside factories, threatening workers with jail or being fired if they went on strike, said Alexander Yaroshuk, leader of the Belarusian Congress of Democratic Unions, an association of independent labor unions.
Thousands of retirees also marched in Minsk in their regular Monday protest to demand Lukashenko’s ouster.
The unrest was triggered by the results of the Aug. 9 election, which officials reported gave Lukashenko a landslide victory over Tsikhanouskaya. She and her supporters refused to recognize the results, and mass protests have rocked the former Soviet nation of 9.5 million almost daily ever since.
Tsikhanouskaya, who fled to Lithuania for fear of her safety, urged the strike if Lukashenko did not resign, release political prisoners and stop the police crackdown by Monday. She gave the goahead for the strike to begin in a statement Sunday night after police in Minsk and other cities again dispersed demonstrators with stun grenades and tear gas.