Tens of thousands of people marched in the streets in Belarus on Sunday, October 18 against President Alexander Lukashenko, despite the threat of live ammunition from the police, who arrested more than 200 people.
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This protest action is the first of any scale since the ultimatum set for Alexander Lukashenko, who came to power in 1994, by the leading figure of the opposition Svetlana Tikhanovskaïa, a refugee in Lithuania.
She gave the president until October 25 to step down, otherwise she will call on the country to take to the streets and a general strike.
Unlike previous rallies, the demonstrators chose Sunday not to march in the center of Minsk but on an artery south of the capital, where many factories are located.
They chanted "Strike!"
and anti-Lukashenko and anti-police slogans.
Interior Ministry spokeswoman Olga Tchemodanova told AFP that more than 200 demonstrators were arrested, almost all in Minsk, and that the police used rubber bullets against them. protesters throwing stones at them.
However, during the day the police did not use live ammunition against the crowd, as they had threatened to do,
"if necessary"
, from Monday, which would have constituted a serious escalation of the crisis.
