BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

28/04/2006

Belarus arrests president's key rival

By Steven Lee Myers The New York Times

FRIDAY, APRIL 28, 2006

MOSCOW The authorities in Belarus on Thursday arrested the main opposition leader and swiftly sentenced him to 15 days in prison, after accusing him of participating in an unauthorized rally the day before against President Aleksandr Lukashenko.

The arrest of Aleksandr Milinkevich, who challenged Lukashenko in last month's presidential election, intensified a crackdown on political opponents following unusually strong public protests against a vote denounced as a fraud. Milinkevich, a 57-year-old former physics professor, had received many warnings but until now had not been imprisoned.

Another opposition politician, Vintsuk Vyachorka of the Belarussian National Front, was arrested late Wednesday after a rally of several thousand people on the 20th anniversary of the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. The date has traditionally been commemorated in Belarus with protests against Lukashenko's authoritarian rule.

Two more political leaders - Sergei Kalyakin of the Communist Party and Aleksandr Bukhvostov of the Labor party - were also arrested Thursday in what appeared to be a concerted round- up of Lukashenko's critics.

"This is a political action, a political sentence," Milinkevich told the judge who tried, convicted and sentenced him within hours of his arrest Thursday morning, Reuters reported from the capital, Minsk. "Leaders of leading political parties are behind bars."

The European Union and the United States have sharply criticized the post- election arrests. Both have imposed travel restrictions on Lukashenko and 30 other officials in retaliation for what Western governments called electoral fraud and subsequent repressive measures against the opposition.

A senior State Department official said in a telephone interview that the United States and European Union were preparing additional punitive measures, including financial sanctions against Lukashenko and others.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of department protocol, called the latest wave of arrests "a last gasp effort to maintain control over things."

But a leader of the human rights organization Charter 97, Andrei Sannikov, said the arrests underscored Lukashenko's defiance.

"He's challenging Europe," Sannikov said in a telephone interview from Minsk. "He's saying you can make whatever statements you want and he will do whatever he wants."

Milinkevich finished a distant second, with 6 percent of the vote in the election last month compared with 82 percent for Lukashenko, according to the government's announced results, which were met with skepticism at home and abroad. The outcome prompted a week of protests, centered around an encampment on October Square in Minsk, which the police ultimately broke up after five days.

Several hundred protesters were arrested and sent to prison immediately after the vote. Most were sentenced to 15 days in prison and have since been released. But a second presidential challenger, Aleksandr Kazulin, remains in detention on more serious charges of having organized anti-Lukashenko protests.

If convicted, he could face as many as six years in prison.

Source:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/04/27/news/belarus.php