Huge protests erupt in Belarus as pressure builds on president to resign
A huge crowd gathered in the capital of Belarus earlier to demand the country’s president resign, two weeks after he claimed to have won a sixth term as leader.
Europe’s ‘last dictator’ Alexander Lukashenko was pictured carrying a rifle and wearing a bulletproof vest while standing behind lines of black-clad riot police as hundreds of thousands amassed against him in the main square of Minsk.
In a show of force, he boarded a helicopter and circled overhead and was seen in footage released by state authorities calling demonstrators ‘scuttling rats.’
The president was facing his 15th straight day of unprecedented protests with crowds growing ever bigger with each demonstration.
His Government had threatened to deploy the army and use ‘whatever force necessary’ against protestors but that failed to deter people from gathering in massive numbers.
There was no official figure for Sunday’s rally but some estimates said 150,000 filled the city’s 17-acre Independence Square.
Protesters say the official August 9 presidential election results that gave Lukashenko a landslide victory are fraudulent.
The scale of the dissent in the former Soviet republic of 9.5 million people is unheard of and its 65-year-old leader – who has been in power for 26 years – appears to be flailing about for a strategy to counter them.
He has repeatedly blamed Western interference, claimed the protests were backed by the United States and accused Nato of building up troop concentrations in Poland and Lithuania on Belarus’ western border, which the alliance denies.
He also claimed that Russian president Vladimir Putin was willing to offer security assistance to his government to quell the protests if he asked for it.
A similarly enormous crowd turned out for a protest a week ago and daily demonstrations have taken place since the vote.
Several of the country’s key factories have been hit with protest strikes by workers fed up with government policies.
Those strikes not only threaten the already-ailing economy, but show that opposition to Lukashenko extends beyond educated white-collar circles and into his traditional blue-collar base.
‘Belarus has changed. Lukashenko has been able to unify everybody, from workers to intelligentsia, in the demand for change,’ said protester Slava Chirkov, who attended Sunday’s demonstration with his wife and son.
They held a sign declaring ‘Lukashenko, your milk has gone sour’, referencing the president’s former job as the director of a Soviet-era collective farm.
Mr Lukashenko’s main election challenger, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, fled to Lithuania the day after the election.
Several other possible challengers fled the country even before the election.
An opposition Coordination Council was created last week to develop a strategy for a transition of power, but authorities in Belarus have opened a criminal probe into its formation.
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