In Minsk on Friday night, thousands of protesters demanding the resignation of authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko formed a 14-kilometer-long chain of people from an isolator on Okrestina Street through the entire city to Kuropati.
The members of the human chain held the national white and red and white flags of Belarus. Many passing cars signaled their support.
Detained protesters were held and tortured in an isolator on Okrestina Street, all of whom have not yet been released, while mass graves of victims of Stalinist repression are located in Kuropati, near the north-eastern border of Minsk.
Later, many members of the human chain joined an evening protest rally in Independence Square near the Government House in central Minsk. The opposition portal “Charter 97” reports that six thousand people have gathered at the rally.
Protests against Lukashenko also took place on Friday night in other Belarusian cities, including Bobruisk, Brest, Grodno, Mikhail, Molodechno, Vitebsk, Zaslavl, Zelva, and Žodina.
Protests against the falsification of the August 9 presidential election and authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko, who have often escalated into protesters’ clashes with security forces, remain unabated in Belarus. Thousands have been detained and several hundred injured in protests. Workers in many state-owned companies have gone on strike.
According to official results, Lukashenko, who has been in power since 1994, won 80.1% of the vote, while opposition candidate Svetlana Tikhanovska won 10.1%, but the opposition believes the election results are fake and Tikhanovska has won the election. European Union countries do not recognize election results.
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