Hundreds held in Belarus crackdown

BELARUS detained hundreds of protesters, including opposition candidates, after smashing a mass rally protesting fraud in the landslide re-election of authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko.

Lukashenko, described as Europe’s last dictator by Washington, won Sunday’s polls outright with 79.6% of the vote on the back of a massive turnout of over 90%, the central election commission said.

His nearest rival received less than 3% in elections which the OSCE observer mission said showed the ex-Soviet state was still a “considerable way” from holding democratic elections. Tens of thousands of outraged voters had braved arrest to gather in central Minsk as the results became official, some trying to storm government buildings and smashing glass doors.

But a reinforced contingent of anti-riot police arrived, encircling the protestors and taking hundreds into waiting police vans. Several were beaten with truncheons.

In what appeared to be a government crackdown on the opposition, seven of the nine challengers to Lukashenko — Nekliayev, Sannikov, Nikolai Statkevich, Rygor Kastusev, Vitaly Rymanshevsky, Ales Mikhalevich and Dmitry Uss — were arrested by yesterday morning, their representatives said.

The US condemned Belarus for the violence, with a US embassy statement saying Washington was “especially concerned over excessive use of force by the authorities”.

EU chief diplomat Catherine Ashton also condemned the use of violence and urged the release of those detained while German foreign minister Guido Westerwelle described the crackdown as “unacceptable”.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who has had a prickly relationship with Lukashenko, showed no sign of wanting to intervene over the police action, saying the election “is an internal matter for Belarus”.

The Vesna (Spring) human rights support group said its count showed that more than 400 protestors had been detained.

The protestors waved Belarussian and EU flags and shouted “For Freedom!”, “Down with the Gulag” and “Long Live Belarus.”

“This is where Belarus received its independence in 1991 and today this is where Lukashenko’sdictatorship will fall,” opposition candidate Andrei Sannikov had declaimed.

President Lukashenko has ruled the former Soviet republic of 10 million for the past 16 years.