Protesters defy riot police in Belarus rally

Thousands of Belarusians defied a massive show of force by the hard-line government in Minsk today, protesting in streets swarming with riot police and gathering peacefully in a park to denounce President Alexander Lukashenko after a disputed election returned him to power.

Rows of black-clad police blocked a central square where opposition leaders had called for a rally at noon, pushing crowds back in a bid to end a week of unprecedented protests in the tightly controlled former Soviet republic. Demonstrators shouted “Shame!” and “Long live Belarus!”

Tensions mounted swiftly around Oktyabrskaya Square as police in full riot gear arrived by the busload to shove protesters back. The crowd at a major intersection near the square – where Lenin Street meets Independence Avenue - quickly swelled from a few hundred to some 3,000.

After gathering on the other side of the sprawling square with a crowd of about the same size, opposition leader Alexander Milinkevich led supporters to a nearby park and the group grew to as many as 5,000 people.

“The authorities can only confront the striving of the people for change with persecution and violence,” Milinkevich told the crowd. Demonstrators held flowers, waved the red-and-white historic flag of the opposition and shouted “We are not afraid!”

“The people have come out today, they have come out in the face of truncheons, in the face of arrests,” Milinkevich said. “The more the authorities conduct repression, the closer they bring themselves to their end.”

Announcing “the creation of a movement for the liberation of Belarus,” Milinkevich praised the protesters, but acknowledged that their numbers are not enough to defeat Lukashenko’s government.

“We can be proud of what we have already done: Fear is vanquished,” he said. “But today there are not 200,000 or 500,000 of us coming out into the square. If there were, they (the authorities) would run away from the country.”

“We are starting work against dictatorship, and this work will sooner or later bear its fruit,” he said.

The tense scenes came a day after police stormed a tent camp in Oktyabrskaya Square that had been the focus of round-the-clock protests over the March 19 election in which Lukashenko won a new five year-term by a landslide in a vote denounced as a farce by the opposition and criticised in the West as undemocratic.

Milinkevich, who wants a new vote without the participation of Lukashenko, had been calling all week for a major demonstration on Saturday marking the anniversary of Belarus’ first independence declaration in 1918.

“We’re not planning any violence, any taking of the Bastille. We want a peaceful demonstration,” he said before the rally, standing with his wife and about 100 relatives of detained activists. “I hope the authorities understand this.”

The election set off a week of persistent protests, beginning with an election-night demonstration that drew some 10,000 people to Oktyabrskaya Square - an enormous turnout in a country where police usually suppress unauthorised gatherings swiftly and brutally. Protesters raised the stakes on Monday, setting up tents where hundreds stayed through the night and remained until the raid at 3am Friday.

The European Union and the US said on Friday that they will impose sanctions on Lukashenko, who they say has turned Belarus into Europe’s last dictatorship since his first election in 1994, and both called for an immediate end to the crackdown on the opposition.