Belarus: election protests update

Written by David Fletcher 27 Aug 2020
Belarus: election protests update

Two senior figures in Belarus's protest movement were given ten-day jail terms at the notorious Okrestino detention centre for organising demonstrations. Olga Kovalkova and Sergei Dylevsky are high-profile members of the National Coordination Council, set up to organise a rerun of the election. Meanwhile teachers gathered outside the education ministry to protest against Mr Lukashenko's threat to sack teachers who fail to back the government. He promised to crack down on his opponents as daily demonstrations swelled into unprecedented, mass protests in Minsk. In her latest video statement from neighbouring Lithuania, opposition leader Ms Tikhanovskaya told the European Parliament that protesters were being ‘illegally detained, imprisoned and beaten’, emphasising the ‘democratic revolution’ was neither pro- nor anti-Russian, nor pro- or anti-European. In Lithuania 50,000 people expressed solidarity with Belarusians by forming a human chain from Lithuania’s capital Vilnius to Medininkai on the border with Belarus.

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