EU condemns deadly crackdown against peaceful protesters
KYIV, Ukraine — Thousands of people rallied in Belarus on Friday following the death of a 31yearold opposition supporter who reportedly was beaten by security forces.
The European Union on Friday condemned the violent crackdown that Belarusian authorities have continued to enforce against peaceful protesters. The man’s death on Thursday came after more than three months of mass antigovernment protests that were sparked by official election results that gave authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko a sixth term in office. Opposition leaders and some poll workers say the results were manipulated, and protesters have been calling for Lukashenko’s resignation.
More than 17,000 people have been detained — thousands of them brutally beaten — since the Aug. 9 presidential election in Belarus, human rights advocates have reported. Thousands of people carrying flowers and candles formed human chains of solidarity in several Belarus cities, including the capital, Minsk, to honor the late opposition supporter, Raman Bandarenka, who died at a Minsk hospital after several hours of surgery for serious injuries.
Ales Bialiatski, the head of the Viasna human rights center, said men in plainclothes who went to a Minsk courtyard to remove red and white ribbons — a symbol of the protests in Belarus — detained Bandarenka in the yard on Wednesday evening. They handed him over to police officers and Bandarenka was brutally beaten inside a van, Bialiatski said in a statement.
Belarusian authorities denied responsibility for his death, with police maintaining he was injured in a street fight. Four people have died since the protests began in August.