BELORUS: Belorussian president Alexander Lukashenko's riot police yesterday broke up days of street protests over his re-election, but the opposition, undeterred, said it would go ahead with a weekend rally against him.
Police wearing riot helmets and carrying batons swooped in the early hours on about 200 demonstrators camped out in Minsk's October Square and drove them off in trucks. They were taken to a detention centre pending trial.
The demonstrators were pressing for a re-run of the March 19th poll which handed Mr Lukashenko five more years in power in the ex-Soviet state that he rules with an iron grip. The opposition says the poll was blatantly rigged.
Despite the arrests, opposition leader Alexander Milinkevich said Mr Lukashenko's foes would not be deterred from holding a peaceful rally - also unauthorised - today as planned. He said demonstrators would avoid any violent clashes with police.
If authorities sealed off October Square, protesters would move to a different location which he refused to disclose.
It was not immediately clear what support Mr Milinkevich could expect for the demonstration.
Dissent is normally quashed quickly in the tightly policed ex-Soviet state. But authorities have handled these protests with comparative tolerance and police may simply divert protesters away from the city centre and avoid confrontation.
Yesterday's police action drew condemnation from the West, but sympathy from Russia, Mr Lukashenko's key backer. Washington said it planned to impose financial sanctions and travel restrictions against Belarus.
Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov defended the police action as restrained. "I would not call what I saw on television a forced dispersal of people or say that there was a use of force," he said, according to Interfax news agency. - (Reuters)