BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

25/03/2007

First legal opposition demonstration broken up by police in Belarus

Belarus police have crushed the first legal demonstration in years by several thousand opponents of President Aleksander Lukashenko in Minsk, reports said Sunday.

According to the witnesses, special security forces forcibly removed protestors from October Square in the centre of Minsk.

According to the Interfax press agency, the city police chief Anatoly Kuleskov said that arrests had been made.

The demonstration had been given permission to go ahead. However, it had not been permitted to deviate from a route approved by the authorities.

Hundreds of arrests were made at last year's protest march on what the opposition call Freedom Day, which is the anniversary of the 1918 declaration of the first Belarusian state.

Supporters of the Belarusian opposition took to the streets on Monday to protest against the re-election one year ago of the authoritarian President Aleksander Lukashenko.

Large numbers of police broke up the illegal demonstration in which only a few dozen people took part, according to Interfax news agency.

Following a controversial change in the constitution, Lukashenko was re-elected for a third term in office with a massive majority on March 19, 2006. dpa fk fs ds

Source:

http://jurnalo.com/jurnalo/storyPage.do?story_id=25423