Thousands protest against Lukashenko's rule in Minsk • 250 protesters arrested by police • Prisoner of war protests: "The reforms proposed by the regime are a lie"
Protesters march in snow in Minsk // Photo: AP
Some 250 protesters were arrested today (Sunday) during protests against the rule of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko across the country, according to Belarusian human rights organization Vesna published by the Russian news agency Interfax.
Human rights activists said most of the protesters were arrested in Minsk and other arrests were made in the cities of Vitebsk, Grodno, Lida, Judino and more.
In the capital, a senior opposition activist named Dmitry Crook, who is also a member of the Coordinating Committee for the Transfer of Power, was arrested.
Vasna's lists have two journalists: the first wrote on the independent news site tut.by and the local newspaper of Brest Stanislav Korshonov and the second wrote in the same newspaper Maxim Halbetz.
The website tut.by reported that as every Sunday, thousands of demonstrators went to various centers around the cities.
Even today, they have encountered police violence that includes aggressive arrests and the use of tear gas and stun grenades.
The protesters also faced severe weather and a blizzard plaguing the country on the right.
One of the heads of the Belarusian cellular company A1 tweeted that the bandwidth of the mobile internet in Minsk, which was recently lowered due to checks, has been restored.
It should be noted that this is not the first time that the authorities have harmed the mobile internet that is widely used among the protesters.
Meanwhile, one of the opposition leaders, Maria Kolesnikova, was interviewed from prison by the German magazine "Der Spiegel".
In an interview, she addressed the situation in the country, the violence of the authorities and the possibilities for dialogue with President Lukashenko.
According to her, the country's leadership has a monopoly on the use of force and is therefore responsible for what is happening in Belarus.
Kolesnikova, the coordinator of the election headquarters of one of the leaders of the opposition Victor in Barico, noted some conditions for a possible dialogue with Alexander Lukashenko: the contacts must take place freely and not in prison, without any repression and with definite goals, including the release of political detainees.
Opposition activists claim that the constitutional reform promoted by Lukashenko is nothing more than an attempt to lie to the people in order to stay in power.