Hundreds of women took part in another demonstration against the regime of authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko in the Belarusian capital Minsk on Saturday. Police cracked down on the protest and detained at least 46 protesters by evening, according to Reuters. The videos showed how masked members of the security forces brutally dragged women into police cars, the DPA agency wrote.
In Belarus, opposition supporters are protesting against falsifying the results of the August 9 presidential election, which Alexander Lukashenko officially won for the sixth time, this time with more than 80 percent of the vote.
Opposition candidate Sviatlana Cichanouska won only ten percent of the vote, according to authorities. The opposition, like the European Union, for example, considers this result of the vote to be falsified.
According to the independent news portal tut.by, over 10,000 women took part in today’s protest parade. Some of them carried banners with the inscriptions “Where is our Masha?” or “Give us back our Masha!”, who demanded the release of the leader of the Belarusian opposition, Maryja Kalesnikava.
Kalesnikava was detained on Monday by masked people, apparently Belarusian security officials, and on Tuesday night they tried to force her out of the country, across the border into Ukraine. However, they did not succeed, because the woman tore off her passport in front of the border and climbed out the window of the car that was to take her across the border. She was then arrested.
The DPA reported that Kalesnikava had been transferred from Minsk to the Žodzina prison, northeast of the Belarusian capital, before today’s protests.
Cichanouska, forced by the regime to go to Lithuania the day after the election, told Lukashenko today that “the violence you use against women is a disgrace.”
Video: Footage shows Kalesnikava’s alleged abduction and an unsuccessful attempt to transport her across the Ukrainian border.
The footage shows the alleged abduction of Kalesnikava and the unsuccessful attempt to transport her across the Ukrainian border Video: tut.by, Associated Press
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