In Belarus on Saturday, in a protest action by thousands of women against authoritarian President Aleksandr Lukashenko, arrests were made again. In the meantime, opposition leader Maria Kolesnikova has been transferred to another prison.
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According to the Wesna human rights center, it is mainly women who have been arrested. Until now, the Belarusian security forces have been rather reticent towards women and have mainly arrested men. Video footage showed on Saturday, however, how masked security forces grappled female protesters and took them away in blinded vans. The independent news site tut.by spoke of thirty arrests on Saturday.
The opposition had called on the women to return to the streets. This was to make it clear to President Lukashenko that the protest movement is widely supported and is still increasing in size. Last Saturday, thousands of women had already participated in manifestations.
A new protest is planned for Sunday afternoon. A ‘march of the heroes’ is planned in the capital Minsk, which will also pay tribute to 38-year-old opposition leader Maria Kolesnikova, who is currently in jail. There are already numerous police forces present.
Torn passport
Before the start of the action on Saturday, it was also announced that 38-year-old opposition leader Maria Kolesnikova has been transferred to another prison. She has moved to a new location northeast of the capital, Minsk. The reason for the relocation has not been communicated by the authorities, the opposition said.
Kolesnikova was arrested by masked men early this week. According to her supporters, the authorities would already have tried to expel her, but she was able to thwart that successfully by tearing up her passport.
Protests and strikes against the Lukashenko regime have been going on for weeks in Belarus. The president, who has been in power for more than a quarter of a century, says he won the August 9 presidential election with 80 percent of the vote. Opposition leader Svetlana Tichanovskaja is said to have reached 10.12 percent. However, according to the opposition, polls have been tampered with on a large scale.
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