Belarus threatens to fire on anti-lukashenko protesters
MINSK: Belarus on Monday threatened to fire on protesters to break up demonstrations against President Alexander Lukashenko, as EU foreign ministers agreed to impose sanctions personally targeting the strongman leader.
The use of live firearms would mark a major escalation in the two-month standoff between Lukashenko and protesters, who have staged peaceful rallies against his disputed re-election in August and against the abuse and torture of detainees.
The warning came after security forces cracked down harshly on anti-lukashenko protests on Sunday, prompting EU foreign ministers to agree it was time to sanction Lukashenko himself.
Later on Monday, officers used tear gas and stun grenades against a group of pensioners holding a regular protest march, prompting outrage from the opposition.
The protests broke out when Lukashenko claimed victory in August 9 elections over a popular opposition candidate, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who claims to be the true winner.
Belarus’s first deputy interior minister Gennady Kazakevich said in a video statement that “we will not leave the streets and law enforcement officers and internal troops if necessary will use riot control equipment and lethal weapons”.
Police have so far only acknowledged using water cannon, rubber bullets and stun grenades to disperse the protesters.
Kazakevich claimed that protests had become “extremely radical”, saying stones and bottles had been thrown at police on Sunday by protesters armed with knives, who built barricades and set fire to tyres.
“This has nothing in common with civil protest,” the deputy minister said, claiming that “groups of fighters, radicals, anarchists and football fans” were taking part.
Belarus was facing attempts to revive the “chaos of the 1990s” and foment the “colour revolutions” that have toppled pro-kremlin leaders in other ex-soviet states, he said.
His statement came as police have used some of the harshest tactics yet against protesters.
On Monday, burly men with black balaclavas and batons confronted a crowd of mainly middle-aged and older women carrying placards with slogans such as “the grandmothers are with the people”, video footage by Tut.by independent news site showed.