BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

26/04/2006

Belarus opposition head to defy ban, attend rally

Source: Reuters

(Recasts with fresh opposition comment)

By Olena Horodetska

MINSK, April 26 (Reuters) - Belarus's main opposition leader, summoned by prosecutors hours before a rally to denounce President Alexander Lukashenko, said on Wednesday he intended to defy an order to stay away from a central Minsk square.

The rally coincides with the 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, the world's worst civil nuclear accident, which took place in neighbouring Ukraine but affected Belarus more than any other country.

Alexander Milinkevich, who challenged Lukashenko's bid for re-election last month, was told to report to prosecutors by two men who intercepted him on his way to a news conference.

"I was warned I could be fined or even held criminally responsible. I was also warned not to go to October Square," Milinkevich told reporters after spending about an hour in the prosecutors' office.

"I will definitely go there even under the threat of arrest. I have moral obligations to people we asked to come to the rally."

Belarus's liberal and nationalist opposition traditionally holds its biggest rally of the year on the Chernobyl anniversary.

Authorities have given permission for the rally, but want it held far from October Square -- site of several days of mass rallies against Lukashenko's re-election in March, denounced as rigged in the West.

Police were already massing on Wednesday in central Minsk.

Belarus, a country of 10 million wedged between Russia and three European Union members, is kept under tight control by Lukashenko, whose rule since 1994 has been described by U.S. officials as "Europe's last dictatorship".

The EU and the United States accuse Lukashenko of hounding political rivals, silencing the media and rigging elections since the mid-1990s.

Officials passed tough legislation last year against illegal assembly, laws that opponents say are intended to prevent any sort of peaceful revolution like those which toppled unpopular governments in ex-Soviet Ukraine and Georgia.

Those accused of organising street rallies can face up to three years in prison.

The opposition staged several days of unprecendented protests against Lukashenko's re-election in March. Police tolerated the rallies for a time but eventually dispersed them.

About 600 people were jailed for up to 15 days on public order offences. Another opposition leader, Alexander Kozulin, faces up to six years on more serious charges.

The Chernobyl reactor explosion blew a radioactive cloud over much of Europe, but contaminated two-thirds of Belarussian territory, downwind from the blast in Ukraine.

Lukashenko has spent the last two days touring the 30-km (19-mile) exclusion zone around Chernobyl, which extends into Belarus.

Source:

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L26700327.htm