Belarus protests: Police arrest greater than 200 ladies in crackdown on peaceable demonstration | World Information

Police in Belarus have cracked down on a girls’s protest march in Minsk demanding the resignation of the nation’s president Alexander Lukashenko.

Larger than 200 girls demonstrating on the streets of the nation’s capital had been arrested on Saturday, along with an aged woman who has become an emblem of the protests which have continued for the earlier six weeks.

At least 2,000 girls took half inside the march, actually one in every of many which Belarussians have staged following the 9 August presidential election which they contemplate Mr Lukashenko fraudulently gained.

Mr Lukashenko has been president in Belarus for 26 years, all through which period he has consistently suppressed political opposition and unbiased info media.

Protests inside the nation have at events attracted roughly 200,000 people – notably on Sundays inside the capital Minsk.

In step with human rights groups Viasna, higher than 200 people had been arrested all through the march on Saturday.

“There have been so many people detained that traces long-established on the prisoner transports,” Viasna member Valentin Stepanovich suggested the Associated Press.

Amongst these detained was Nina Bahinskaya, a 73-year-old former geologist whose defiance has made her an iconic decide among the many many protesters.

The women in Saturday’s march chanted “we’re strolling”, in reference to when police suggested Ms Bahinskaya she was collaborating in an unauthorised protest and she or he snapped once more: “I’m taking a stroll.”

Opposition chief Svetlana Tikhanovskaya praised the women’s march in a video assertion from Lithuania, the place she fled after being held inside a authorities electoral office following the election.

Chatting with Sky Data, Mrs Tikhanovskaya acknowledged she was not yet ready to talk about what happened to her all through the time she was held in custody.

It is thought she was threatened with being separated from her two youthful children, whom she had already moved to Lithuania.

“They’ve frightened and put pressure on girls for the second month, nonetheless no matter this, Belarusians are persevering with their peaceful protest and displaying their great fortitude,” Mrs Tikhanovskaya acknowledged of Saturday’s march.