Belarus Opposition Leader Proclaims New Liberation Movement as Police Break Up Rally

25.03.2006

MosNews
Belarus’s opposition leader on Saturday publicly told President Alexander Lukashenko that more and more people were losing their fear of him and announced the formation of a movement to “liberate” the country from his grip, Reuters reported Saturday.

In the most audacious public challenge to the man who has just been re-elected after running Belarus with an iron rod for 12 years, Alexander Milinkevich told a rally: “I declare the creation of a Popular Movement for the Liberation of Belarus.”

Meanwhile, riot police clashed with protesters in the Belarusian capital, AP said, forcing demonstrators back and hitting several with truncheons. Four explosions were heard, apparently percussion grenades set off by police. The clash broke out after a line of riot police blocked the path of hundreds of protesters heading to a jail where demonstrators arrested in previous protests were being held. Police beat their shields with truncheons and advanced on the crowd.

The protesters began to disperse, yelling: “Fascists!” But police detained some 20 people and loaded them into large trucks.

At least two people were seen lying on the ground after the clash, apparently seriously hurt. An ambulance came to pick up the injured.

Milinkevich was heavily defeated by Lukashenko in a March 19 poll that the opposition says was blatantly rigged. He told the crowd of several thousand who turned out in a central Minsk park: “We are the ones who have won because more and more people are ceasing to be afraid.”

Milinkevich, 58, a soft-spoken former lecturer, said the wave of protests since last Sunday’s election represented “only a first storming of the regime.

”We will keep on working, but we will not put off the next storming for another five years. We will fight above all else for fair and honest elections,“ he declared.

Lukashenko has made no major public statements since describing his victory as the failure of a Western-backed revolution he said was being fomented. He is due to be inaugurated on March 31.

The mood was buoyant and festive among protesters trooping to Yanka Kupala park, daubed in sunshine, for an unauthorized rally after riot police stopped them from massing on October Square, the site of a tent camp cleared by police on Friday.

Chanting ”Shame!“ and ”Long Live Belarus!“ the crowds gathered round the podium and listened to speaker after speaker.

Several hundred protesters, headed by another opposition presidential candidate, Alexander Kozulin, later marched to Okrestino pre-trial detention center in Minsk, where their detained comrades were being held.

A Reuters witness said the crowd started marching calmly toward the center after Kozulin urged them to support prisoners detained in the early hours of Friday morning.

According to opposition figures, police detained more than 300 demonstrators and drove them off in trucks to the center.

In line with the pattern this week, police showed tolerance unusual for the tightly controlled ex-Soviet state and refrained from using force to break up the demonstration.
Dissent is normally quickly snuffed out by the state security service.

Some observers have speculated that Lukashenko may be under pressure from Russia, his most powerful backer, not to allow violent action by the police that could embarrass Moscow in the year when it chairs the G8 group of rich nations.

Earlier Milinkevich, credited with only 6 percent of the vote to Lukashenko’s 83 in the March 19 election, had urged supporters to mass ”no matter what“ in October Square.

The rally was also billed as a commemoration of the independence day of a short-lived Belarusian republic in 1918.

Demonstrators are demanding a re-run of the poll, which handed Lukashenko five more years in power.

Events in Belarus have set Russia, which endorses his victory, at odds with the United States and western Europe.

The United States and the European Union issued separate statements denouncing the police action and announcing plans to impose restrictions.

U.S. President George W. Bush said Washington urged ”all members of the international community to join us in condemning any and all abuses.“

But Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe — which described the election as flawed — as playing an ”inflammatory role“ in Belarus. He defended the police action as restrained.
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