Belarus: Police Beat Back Anti-Government Protest over Elections (Schwirtz)

UPDATE 1350 GMT: Observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe have declared that, although some specific improvements were made, the election showed that Belarus still has a considerable way to go in meeting its commitments.

Tony Lloyd, the head of the short-term observer missio, said, "This election failed to give Belarus the new start it needed. The counting process lacked transparency. The people of Belarus deserved better. And, in particular, I now expect the Government to account for the arrests of presidential candidates, journalists and human rights activists."

Yeah, yeah, but will Belarus get the $4 billion in aid promised by the European Union if the elections were "free and fair"?

UPDATE 1000 GMT: The Belarus Central Election Commission HAS said preliminary results show President Aleksandr Lukashenko with 79.67% of the vote. The next-highest total for any of the nine challengers is 2.56%.

UPDATE 0930 GMT: Charter 97 claims that six opposition candidates have now been detained.

See Also: Belarus Video: Thousands of Anti-Government Protestors Storm Government Building

UPDATE 0925 GMT: The Guardian of London adds details:

In addition to the report that opposition candidate Vladimir Neklyayev has been taken to hospital unconscious, another candidate, Andrei Sannikov has been beaten and detained.

Several journalists, including a photographer for The New York Times and two cameramen for Russia Today, are among the injured.

The European Union has offered Belarus a €3 billion (about $4 billion) aid package if the elections are declared free and fair. Observers from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe were monitoring the elections for the first time.

The opposition has called a second rally for 6 p.m. (1500 GMT) today. Lukashenko promised, after casting his vote, to deal harshly with the opposition: "I don't conduct any dialogue with bandits and saboteurs."

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Michael Schwirtz writes for The New York Times:

Antigovernment protesters were beaten back by swarms of riot police officers on Sunday when they tried to storm the Belarus government headquarters here in an outburst of anger and frustration over the apparent and, many said, wholly unsurprising re-election of the country’s authoritarian president, Aleksandr G. Lukashenko.

Thousands of people converged on Independence Square here in the capital, heeding opposition leaders who called Sunday’s election a farce and accused Mr. Lukashenko of keeping the post-Soviet country locked in dictatorship.

Official election results released by the government early Monday morning showed Mr. Lukashenko with 79.7 percent of the votes cast, Reuters reported.

The protesters chanted slogans like “Long Live Belarus” and disparaged Mr. Lukashenko, who in 16 years as president has muzzled the news media, eliminated political opponents and emboldened the secret police. At one point, protesters charged the entrance of the imposing government headquarters, breaking through glass doors and trying to push through barricades that had been erected inside.

But armored riot troops quickly overwhelmed the protesters, at times funneling them toward packs of plainclothes officers who beat them. Earlier in the evening, one of the leading opposition candidates, Vladimir Neklyaev, appeared to have been beaten unconscious in a separate attack. He was taken to a hospital, but one of his aides said seven men wrapped him in a blanket and carried him away, as his wife screamed from a locked room, The Associated Press reported.

The protests echoed similar demonstrations in 2006 after an earlier re-election of Mr. Lukashenko. Those protests were easily quashed.

By late Sunday evening, police officers wielding shields and clubs occupied large swaths of downtown Minsk, and protesters had begun to disperse. It was unclear how many arrests had been made, though there were reports that several opposition leaders had been detained.

Earlier in the day, Mr. Lukashenko suggested that the authorities would take steps to ensure that the opposition would not be able to gather to protest the results. Speaking to reporters after casting his vote at a large athletic complex, he called members of the opposition “bandits and saboteurs.”

“For half a year, people have been saying these elections will be unfair,” he said. “Today my fate and theirs is being decided by the people of Belarus, and only the people of Belarus.”

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