MORE than 100,000 protesters demanding the resignation of the Belarusian president have gathered in the capital, keeping up the massive outburst of dissent that has shaken the country since a disputed presidential election two weeks ago.
Yesterday’s demonstration overflowed Minsk’s sprawling 17-acre Independence Square.
Although there were no official figures on crowd size, a reporter for the PA news agency said it appeared to be at least 150,000 people.
Dozens of police prisoner transport vehicles were parked along the edges of the square, but police made no immediate efforts to break up the gathering.
Protesters say the official election results, in which President Alexander Lukashenko reportedly received 80% of the vote, are fraudulent.
The size and duration of the protests are unprecedented for Belarus, a former Soviet republic of 9.5 million people. Lukashenko – who turns 66 on Sunday and has been in power for 26 years – appears to be flailing about for a strategy to counter them.
He has repeatedly blamed Western interference and claimed the protests were backed by the United States. He has also accused Nato of building up troop concentrations in Poland and Lithuania, on Belarus’s western border, which the alliance denies.
The incumbent leader 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 on August 9.
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 yesterday’s demonstration.
They held a sign declaring “Lukashenko, your milk has gone sour”, referencing the president’s former job as the director of a collective farm.
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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