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“I believe my own eyes, the majority was for us,” Tikhanovskaya stated in a information convention on Monday, in line with a number of native media reviews. “We do not recognize the election results. We have seen real protocols. We urge those who believe that their voice was stolen not to remain silent.”
The Central Election Commission in Belarus introduced Monday that preliminary outcomes confirmed Lukashenko received with 80.23% of the vote, whereas Tikhanovskaya stands at 9.9%.
Riots erupted throughout the nation after official exit polls launched late Sunday gave the victory to Lukashenko. Around 3,000 folks had been detained and dozens injured throughout clashes with police, the inside ministry stated in an announcement seen by state-run information company Belta.
Twitter stated Monday it was seeing “blocking and throttling” of its platform in Belarus in response to the protests.
“Real-time community knowledge affirm the incident is ongoing, limiting freedom of expression and meeting.”
Critics have voiced considerations about widespread poll stuffing and falsifications. Independent monitoring group “Honest folks” said at Tikhanovskaya’s news conference that, according to their data, she won in at least 80 polling stations across Belarus.
Tikhanovskaya, 37, added that she was ready to meet Lukashenko to discuss bringing “peaceable change of energy.”
Her campaign has said it is “prepared for long-term protests” and that it will demand a recount.
Monitoring organization Golos said it counted more than a million ballots and, according to its calculations, Tikhanovskaya won 80% of the vote.
Lukashenko said on Monday that he would not “permit the nation to be torn aside,” claiming that the protests were initiated by “overseas puppeteers,” Belta reported.
He added that law enforcement would not back down, and questioned why he would transfer power to the opposition given the preliminary election results.
“Riot officers had been wounded, there are damaged legs and arms. These guys had been intentionally hit they usually have pushed again. Why sob and cry now? The response shall be satisfactory,” Lukashenko said.
“So Lukashenko — who’s on the high of the vertical of energy, the pinnacle of the state, voluntarily, with 80% of the votes — should switch energy to them? This is all coming from overseas,” Lukashenko said.
The UK government is calling on Belarus to “chorus from additional acts of violence” following the “significantly flawed” elections, UK Foreign Office Minister James Duddridge said in a statement Monday.
“The violence and the makes an attempt by Belarusian authorities to suppress protests are utterly unacceptable,” Duddridge said.
The statement continued: “There has been an absence of transparency all through the electoral course of in addition to the imprisonment of opposition candidates, journalists and peaceable protestors.”
Duddridge added it was “unacceptable” that British Embassy staff and other members of the diplomatic community were obstructed from carrying out their duties as independent election observers.
In a written statement as part of a news briefing, the French Foreign Ministry said on Monday: “Results should be made public in a whole and clear method.
“We are also noting with concern that protesters who demonstrated after the closure of polling stations have been met with violence, and we call for maximum restraint.”
The UK and France each expressed concern over Belarus’ failure to permit the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and the Council of Europe to watch the electoral course of.
‘Europe’s final dictator’
Tikhanovskaya, a former English tutor, turned an sudden rival to Lukashenko, and the face of the opposition after taking up from her husband, Sergey Tikhanovskiy, a well-liked YouTube blogger and former candidate who has been jailed since May.
Her marketing campaign rallies noticed vital turnouts even in small Belarusian cities not recognized for his or her protest exercise. About 63,000 folks attended the biggest occasion in Minsk in July — making it the most important demonstration in the previous decade.
Tikhanovskaya joined forces with two ladies who ran different opposition campaigns after their candidates had been additionally both barred from operating or jailed. Lukashenko had dismissed them as “poor girls” in his annual state of the union tackle on Tuesday and stated he is not going to “give the country away.”
Tikhanovskaya’s marketing campaign supervisor Maria Kolesnikova was additionally taken to a police station for questioning on the eve of the vote. A day earlier than that, marketing campaign supervisor Maria Moroz was briefly detained.
Tikhanovskaya first disputed the outcomes at a information convention late Sunday, together with her marketing campaign sustaining that she had received in dozens of polling stations in Minsk at that stage.
On Monday, the chief of the European Council criticized Belarus for making an attempt to quash protests. “Violence against protesters is not the answer Belarus,” Charles Michel stated on Twitter. “Freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, basic human rights must be upheld.”
Nicknamed “Europe’s last dictator,” Lukashenko has dominated the previous Soviet republic of greater than 9 million folks since 1994. He has lengthy drawn worldwide criticism for suppressing dissent, and the nation’s secret police — nonetheless recognized as the KGB — typically detain and harass opposition activists and unbiased journalists.
Framed as one of many hardest challenges to Lukashenko’s 26-year-long rule, it was the Belarus strongman’s sixth reelection marketing campaign.
The ballot noticed a large turnout, in line with official knowledge, with the nation’s Central Election Commission saying Monday that the official turnout was at 84.23%.
Observers barred
Independent observers in Belarus, such as the “Honest people” group, stated they’d additionally discovered vital discrepancies between the formally introduced turnout and the variety of folks coming into polling stations that they had been in a position to depend.
Most unbiased observers had been barred from monitoring the election. Dozens of unbiased observers had been detained on Saturday and early Sunday, in line with the “Honest people” and “Right to choose” initiatives.
The OSCE stated in July it will not be sending observers to Belarus as it hadn’t been invited by the nation’s authorities.
Journalist Mikalai Anishchanka in Minsk and CNN’s Barbara Wojazer, Sebastian Shukler and Sarah Dean contributed.
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