Protests continue against Belarus president
MOSCOW — Protesters on Sunday again flooded into the capital of Belarus and towns across the country, signaling the depth of anger at President Alexander Lukashenko, an iron-fisted leader who, fortified by strong support from Russia, has shown no sign of bending.
The Belarus protests have mobilized large numbers of people for nearly a month, since a disputed presidential election, and have been dominated by calls for Lukashenko to resign. They have struggled, though, to bend the will of an authoritarian leader who has rejected all compromise and scorned his critics as “rats,” “tricksters” and “traitors.”
The crowd on Sunday in Minsk, the Belarusian capital, appeared to be as large as those on three previous Sundays, when more than 100,000 people gathered to protest what they believe was a blatantly rigged presidential election on Aug. 9 and to demand that the declared victor, Lukashenko, cede power.
Defying government warnings, protesters in Minsk paraded up to lines of riot police officers blocking major avenues, shouting, “Shame!” and “Go away.” They waved red and white flags, which served as the national flag until Lukashenko replaced it 25 years ago — a year after he took office — with a more Soviet-looking standard.
Smaller protests were reported in Brest, a city in the west on the border with Poland; Grodno, a hotbed of opposition sentiment in the northwest; Gomel, a town in the southeast near Russia where Lukashenko has staged a number of progovernment rallies, and several other towns.