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Masked safety brokers dragged students off the streets and bundled them into vans as new protests broke out in opposition to Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko on Saturday on the fourth weekend since his disputed re-election.
Up to 30 individuals had been detained for participating in unsanctioned protests, Russian information company TASS quoted the Minsk police as saying.
Draped in red-and-white opposition flags, students staged protests in a number of locations in the capital, together with exterior the Minsk State Linguistic Institute the place police had arrested 5 individuals on Friday, native media footage confirmed.
Elsewhere masked men dragged away students who had gathered at an eatery in Karl Marx Street in the centre of Minsk, whereas a few of the protesters shouted “tribunal!”, based on footage proven by information outlet TUT.BY.
Thousands of girls later held a separate march by means of Minsk in the afternoon, shouting “hands off the children” as considered one of their slogans.
One girl went as much as masked safety forces standing in a line, displaying them photos of protesters with bruises on their our bodies. The authorities has beforehand denied abusing detainees after many come out of jail following the election complaining of punishment beatings.
Protesters later converged on a Catholic church in Independence Square, with tons of crammed inside for a service, in solidarity with Minsk’s archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz who was barred from re-entering Belarus on Monday.
After the service completed, clergymen and protesters marched in a procession round the constructing generally known as the Red Church and mentioned prayers on the sq., with tons of of individuals shining their telephones as flashlights.
A former Soviet collective farm supervisor, Lukashenko has struggled to comprise a wave of mass protests and strikes since he received a sixth time period at an election final month that opponents say was rigged. He denies electoral fraud.
Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, his foremost challenger who fled into exile two days after the election, will journey to Warsaw to satisfy the Polish prime minister subsequent week.
A member of her marketing campaign group and a senior member of the opposition Coordination Council, Olga Kovalkova, on Saturday additionally arrived in the Polish capital fearing she can be arrested once more if she remained in Belarus.
Lukashenko has beforehand dismissed the coronavirus pandemic as a “psychosis” that might be tackled by consuming vodka and taking saunas.
But on Saturday he appeared to chide the protesters for spreading the illness.
“We stagger through the streets, rubbing against each other,” he mentioned at a televised authorities assembly.
“Where’s the social distancing and so on in that? We’re doing everything we can to delay the moment when we say goodbye to this disease. That’s unacceptable.”
Thousands took half in protests that coincided with the begin of the faculty 12 months on Tuesday. At the Minsk State Linguistic Institute, students sang “Do you hear the people sing”, a protest anthem from the musical “Les Miserables”.
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