Live fire against protesters. The Belarusian Interior Ministry has admitted that security personnel used firearms against citizens protesting Tuesday night in the city of Brest against the suspicious official results of the presidential elections, which with 80% of the vote Aleksandr Lukashenko is given his sixth term. Interior ensures that the police used live ammunition because the protesters carried steel sticks, attacked the officers and "the shots into the air did not stop them." There is at least one critically injured by firearm, according to civil rights organizations. The protests continue for the fourth day in a row and authoritarian leader Lukashenko, who has been in power for 26 years, keeps the pulse by hardening repression and violence. A protester died on Monday and more than 6,000 people have been detained in the country since Sunday. Meanwhile, the European Union, which will analyze the situation in Belarus on Friday, is considering applying new sanctions to the former Soviet republic of 9.4 million inhabitants.
"The election results were falsified, we demand justice and peace for all Belarusians," Svetlana, 30, claims from Minsk. The young woman, who works as an accountant, joined dozens of women in Minsk on Wednesday to form a human chain around a well-known market to protest violence against protesters. Dressed in white and many carrying flowers, they have later marched through the streets of the capital of Belarus. In other cities, the same scene was repeated: dozens of women holding hands have demanded that Lukashenko release political prisoners. “The police act according to the illegitimate orders of the illegitimate authorities. But the people are us, not these usurpers, ”Svetlana says by phone, who for fear of reprisals does not want to give her last name. She plans to continue taking to the streets to protest.
At another point in Minsk, in front of one of the largest detention centers in which it is suspected that a large part of those arrested these days may be, dozens of people gathered to try to gather information about their relatives; some have been missing since Sunday. That night, authorities detained 3,000 people, another 2,000 overnight from Monday to Tuesday, and more than a thousand on Tuesday. There have been mobilizations in some thirty cities. In a statement, the Interior Ministry reports that 51 protesters and 14 policemen were injured on Tuesday night.
The repression of the protests has been intense. More than in 2010, when allegations of electoral fraud brought thousands of people to the streets, says Oleg Gulak, lawyer and president of the civil rights organization Helsinki Committee of Belarus. “The action of the police today is more brutal. They are using firearms, water cannons, stun grenades ... Ten 10 years ago it was almost all over in one day. But now, the mobilization is greater and the anger of civil society is very great, ”says Gulak, a well-known activist, who believes that the protests will not stop and that fighting them with repressive methods will not contain them. Neither is the Internet blackout, with which the authorities intend to stifle dissent.
“After so many years under the tyrannical government, it is difficult for the people to unite, the very idea of resistance seems wild. But the cruelty of Lukashenko's security forces is unprecedented, ”is outraged Víktor, who works in a Minsk mechanical workshop and who claims that the police broke the glass of his car just by honking the horn when he passed near a group of protesters.
Lukashenko, 65, who faces his greatest challenge and who has emerged even more weakened from the elections over which immense doubts fly, has charged the protesters. They are, he said, "people with a criminal past who are unemployed." "In a friendly way I warn everyone to get a job," he stressed this Wednesday at a meeting of the Belarusian security council. The president has also accused those who come out to protest of being sponsored from abroad.
Western governments have condemned the conduct of the presidential elections last Sunday and the violence against protesters. This Tuesday, the president of France, Emmanuel Macron, had a conversation with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, in which he expressed his “great concern” about the situation in Belarus. Minsk and Moscow, Putin and Lukashenko, are allies although their relations are now tense because Russia has refused to renew the economic and trade agreements on which the neighboring country depends. Furthermore, Poland has offered to mediate between Lukashenko and the opposition. Also Lithuania, where the opposition Svetlana Tijanovskaya has taken refuge, who attended the elections against the authoritarian leader and who left the country on Tuesday after an apparent threat to her children. Her husband has been detained in a Belarusian prison since May.
The Union of Journalists of Russia, which closely follows the situation in the neighboring country, denounces that the authorities are working hard to try to silence coverage of the demonstrations. More than 50 informants have been arrested, some have had the material they planned to publish (images) seized and their cameras have been broken, the union says.
