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Demonstrators on Sunday in Minsk: "Long live Belarus"
Photo: STRINGER / REUTERS
During protests against the ruler Alexander Lukashenko in Belarus, security forces took massive action against demonstrators.
Videos in the news channel Telegram showed on Sunday how people in the capital Minsk ran away from masked emergency services.
You could also see demonstrators being led away and police officers sometimes beating them.
According to the opposition movement, water cannons were also used to drive people apart.
135 people were arrested, said the civil rights group Spring 96.
The Wiasna Human Rights Center listed the names of more than 70 people arrested.
According to opposition figures, more than 30,000 people have been arrested since the protests began in Belarus in August.
Lukashenko's opponents accuse the president of manipulating the election in the summer in order to extend his 26-year term in office.
Lukashenko, however, denies election fraud and refuses to resign.
Thousands of people took part in the protests that Sunday.
They first gathered in residential areas and then formed larger groups.
According to the media organization Nasha Niva, there were more than 120 small and large rallies in the capital Minsk and other cities.
In the Minsk suburbs, protesters marched through the streets waving white and red striped flags, a symbol of the opposition.
Rally participants shouted "Long live Belarus".
Tichanovskaya receives human rights award
In view of the reprisals by the government, many citizens have already left the country and sought refuge in Lithuania or Poland, for example.
Opposition leader Svetlana Tichanovskaya, who now lives in Lithuania, congratulated her compatriots on Sunday for "resisting repression, violence and the cold."
The Belarusians wanted to live in a "democratic and free country," wrote Tichanovskaya on Twitter.
"This Sunday is the 18th Sunday in a row on which the people show that they are ready to continue defending their rights," said the civil rights activist.
The 38-year-old ran against the head of state in the controversial presidential election on August 9 and later fled abroad after massive state pressure.
Tichanowskaja wants to meet Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier in Berlin on Monday.
Then she will travel to Brussels and hold talks with the EU foreign representative Josep Borrell and members of the EU Parliament, said the opposition leader.
"The most important task of this visit is to stop violence and lawlessness against Belarusians." On Wednesday Tichanowskaya received the European Parliament's renowned Sakharov Human Rights Prize.
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Fok / AFP / dpa / Reuters
