Riot police in Belarus on Saturday bundled hundreds of women, including a great-grandmother who has become an icon of the protest movement, into vans as opposition marchers rallied in Minsk seeking an end to Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko’s 26-year rule.
The protest was the latest in which Belarusian women have taken to the streets with flowers and flags.
The numbers detained on Saturday were far higher than the previous week’s rally. The women were seized by riot police in black uniforms and balaclavas as well as officers in khaki uniforms and plainclothes officers in masks.
Photo: AFP
Police blocked the women and began pulling them into police vans as they stood with linked hands, swiftly detaining hundreds, an Agence France-Presse journalist said.
Police lifted some women off their feet to remove them.
The Viasna rights group published online the names of 328 women detained, while police spokeswoman Olga Chemodanova told reporters that the number detained would be announced yesterday.
Police detained so many protesters that they ran out of room in vans, the opposition’s Coordination Council said.
About 2,000 women took part in the “Sparkly March,” wearing shiny accessories and carrying red-and-white flags of the protest movement.
Among those detained on Saturday was Nina Baginskaya, a 73-year-old advocate who has become one of the best-known faces of the protest movement, known for her plucky antics and regularly celebrated with a chant of “Nina! Nina!”
Police took away the flag and flowers she was carrying as they pushed her into a van, but released her outside a police station shortly afterward.
The march was the latest in a series of all-women protests calling for the president to leave following his disputed victory in elections last month.
His opposition rival Svetlana Tikhanovskaya also claimed victory.
Tikhanovskaya, who has taken shelter in Lithuania, condemned the “arbitrary” detentions, saying that police without any identifying badges had “roughly detained en masse beautiful and brave women who were protesting lawfully and peacefully.”
The Coordination Council, set up by Tikhanovskaya’s allies to arrange a peaceful handover of power, described the detentions as “a new phase in the escalation of violence against peaceful protesters.”
Tikhanovskaya said that protesters were ready to strip riot police who carry out “criminal orders” of anonymity.
The Poland-based opposition Telegram channel Nexta published a list of more than 1,000 names and ranks of alleged police offenders, saying that it received the data from whistle-blowers and would post more if detentions continued.
Witness accounts of police violence and torture of detainees following the elections have prompted the European Parliament to call for sanctions against Lukashenko and other members of his regime.
The marchers chanted slogans such as “Get out, you and your riot police!” and “We believe we can win!”
One of the placards read: “Our protest has a woman’s face,” a reference to the title of a popular book by the Belarusian Nobel prize winner Svetlana Alexievich, who has backed the opposition cause.
“I will march to the end, until we claim victory, because we are in the right,” said one protester, Irina, a 50-year-old programmer.
Some women managed to run away and took shelter in a nearby nail salon, Tut.by news site reported.
The protest came as the opposition was due to hold mass demonstrations yesterday afternoon in Minsk and other cities.
Tikhanovskaya is to meet EU foreign ministers and the bloc’s diplomatic chief in Brussels today, in a move that Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Maria Zakharova condemned as “flirting with a self-appointed representative of the Belarusian opposition.”
The women’s protests began in Belarus after Lukashenko’s use of extreme violence against detained demonstrators.
Women began forming human chains and marching through Minsk and other cities wearing white clothes and carrying flowers in peaceful demonstrations that police initially allowed to go ahead.
Last weekend, police violently detained several dozen at a similar women’s protest.
Lukashenko last week warned of a possible “war” with some neighboring countries and has turned to Russia for support after refusing to step down.
The Philippine Department of Justice yesterday labeled Vice President Sara Duterte the “mastermind” of a plot to assassinate the nation’s president, giving her five days to respond to a subpoena. Duterte is being asked to explain herself in the wake of a blistering weekend press conference where she said she had instructed that Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr be killed should an alleged plot to kill her succeed. “The government is taking action to protect our duly elected president,” Philippine Undersecretary of Justice Jesse Andres said at yesterday’s press briefing. “The premeditated plot to assassinate the president as declared by the self-confessed mastermind
Texas’ education board on Friday voted to allow Bible-infused teachings in elementary schools, joining other Republican-led US states that pushed this year to give religion a larger presence in public classrooms. The curriculum adopted by the Texas State Board of Education, which is controlled by elected Republicans, is optional for schools to adopt, but they would receive additional funding if they do so. The materials could appear in classrooms as early as next school year. Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott has voiced support for the lesson plans, which were provided by the state’s education agency that oversees the more than
Ireland, the UK and France faced travel chaos on Saturday and one person died as a winter storm battered northwest Europe with strong winds, heavy rain, snow and ice. Hampshire Police in southern England said a man died after a tree fell onto a car on a major road near Winchester early in the day. Police in West Yorkshire said they were probing whether a second death from a traffic incident was linked to the storm. It is understood the road was not icy at the time of the incident. Storm Bert left at least 60,000 properties in Ireland without power, and closed
CONSPIRACIES: Kano suspended polio immunization in 2003 and 2004 following claims that polio vaccine was laced with substances that could render girls infertile Zuwaira Muhammad sat beside her emaciated 10-month-old twins on a clinic bed in northern Nigeria, caring for them as they battled malnutrition and malaria. She would have her babies vaccinated if they regain their strength, but for many in Kano — a hotbed of anti-vaccine sentiment — the choice is not an obvious one. The infants have been admitted to the 75-bed clinic in the Unguwa Uku neighbourhood, one of only two in the city of 4.5 million run by French aid agency Doctors Without Borders (MSF). Kano has the highest malaria burden in Nigeria, but the city has long