Depleted by a wave of arrests, Belarus' opposition movement is seeking ways to regroup after week-long protests were broken up by a state apparatus determined to defend President Alexander Lukashenko.
Authorities at a detention center outside Minsk finally confirmed that they had in detention Alexander Kozulin, an opposition candidate in the March 19 presidential election, who was arrested on Saturday when security forces violently broke up a protest march, Kozulin's wife Irina said.
About 100 youths attended a vigil on Sunday evening to honor the marchers beaten by police, lighting candles at a monument to 53 young people who were crushed to death in a May 1999 stampede at a Minsk metro station.
PHOTO: AP
Lukashenko "won't last five years," said Liliya, a 21-year-old teacher, referring to the length of a presidential term. "He's only got a little while left -- he's very afraid."
The arrest of Kozulin as he and others tried to visit a jail holding fellow opposition supporters came amid a wave of detentions of those who have tried to protest against Lukashenko's re-election to a third term in office.
The main opposition candidate, Alexander Milinkevich, attempted to visit Kozulin on Sunday but when he rang at the entrance to the detention center in the town of Zhodino he was turned away by a metallic voice telling him to come back yesterday.
"I came to check if Kozulin is here. I want to bring him my moral support," he told journalists.
Milinkevich promised to launch an information campaign that would counter the authorities' claims that the opposition had resorted to violence.
A stepson of Milinkevich is among up to 250 opposition supporters said by human-rights groups to be held in Zhodino in connection with Saturday's clash with police and with the days-long protest on Minsk's October Square. Most of those who camped out on the square were handed sentences of up to two weeks for hooliganism.
"The country doesn't know what happened due to the propaganda of the state media," Milinkevich said.
Among others being held was the leader of the United Civic Party, Anatoly Lebedko. The head of the Belarussian Popular Front, Vintsuk Vyachorka, is reportedly in hiding.
Despite the blow dealt to the opposition, Vyachorka's deputy, Viktor Ivashkevich, said progress had been made on forming a new united opposition movement called For Freedom.
"Many are now in prison but were convicted for 10 to 15 days and will come out and continue work," Ivashkevich said.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
RSS