U.S. And EU Assail Belarus Crackdown

MINSK, Belarus -- The United States and Europe on Friday denounced the crackdown on peaceful demonstrators in Belarus and said they would impose sanctions against President Aleksandr Lukashenko and other top officials, widening the rift between Belarus and the West and posing new challenges for the West's relations with Russia.

Riot policemen arrest a supporter of the main opposition presidential candidate Alexander Milinkevich in downtown Minsk. Belarus quashed an unprecedented mass protest against authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko, smashing a tent camp, arresting hundreds of opposition supporters and triggering an angry response from the West.
The announcement came as Belarussian authorities were processing hundreds of demonstrators in a Soviet- era prison here in the capital, and holding what the opposition described as closed trials without legal representation or defense witnesses.

The opposition also said many detainees were being beaten, denied the use of toilets, forced to stand for hours outside in subfreezing temperatures and then packed by nearly the score into small prison cells.

"It is a horrible violation of human rights and the law," said Aleksandr Milinkevich, the principal challenger to Lukashenko in the tainted presidential election on March 19. "They do not consider us to be people."

Neither Lukashenko nor his government made any immediate comment about the new round of planned sanctions. But in an appearance on Monday, Lukashenko had said he expected further actions against Belarus and was defiant. "We have lived in international isolation for so long," he said.

He added that no matter what steps were taken against his government, Europe would hardly be able to restrict its trade with Belarus, which is a main transit route to the West for Russian gas and oil.

Still, the diplomatic statements from the West on Friday were notable in their swiftness and near unanimity in condemning the Belarussian president and the actions of his police.

As many as 1,000 people have been arrested in the last several days for participating in rallies or supporting the opposition with such gestures as trying to give demonstrators food, according to Milinkevich and Aleksandr Kazulin, another presidential candidate. The United States echoed public appeals by both candidates for Belarus to release the prisoners immediately.

"The United States calls on authorities in Belarus to release without delay the hundreds of citizens who have been detained, not only in the past 24 hours but in recent days and weeks, simply for expressing their political views," said the White House spokesman, Scott McClellan.

Calling Belarus "a sad exception" to democracy in Europe, leaders of the European Union said they would add Lukashenko's name to an existing visa ban in place against six Belarussian officials. The move puts him on the same blacklist as President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe and Burma's military leaders, all of whom have had their European assets frozen.

The Polish foreign minister, Stefan Meller, said new restrictions, which will take effect around April 10, could involve more than a dozen people. "This is a fight of good against evil," he said.

Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany said Europe must take action "to restrict those that prevented free choice."

The crackdown puts new strain on relations between the West and Russia, which has congratulated Lukashenko for his official victory and said the election, seen in the West as a self-evident farce, marked "the development of democratic institutions and the strengthening of the foundations of civic society in Belarus."

European leaders said they hoped Russia would re-evaluate its stance. "We have to be tough, but we also have to speak with our Russian friends - that is the most important," said Luxembourg's foreign minister, Jean Asselborn.

But Russia, which holds the rotating chairmanship of the Group of 8 industrialized nations, showed no sign of rethinking its embrace of Lukashenko, the former head of a Soviet collective farm who runs the country with an authoritarian grip.

Rather than condemn the crackdown or a president often called Europe's last dictator, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov signaled approval during a press conference in Moscow.

He dismissed the protests as "illegal activities" and accused a European election-monitoring organization of having prejudged the election and instigated the demonstrations that followed.

"It has played an inflammatory role," Lavrov said of the organization, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which includes Russia as a member.

"To goad people into illegal activities is, I think, wrong," he added, according to a transcript of his remarks provided by the Foreign Ministry.

Christian Strohal, director of the organization's human rights arm, responded in a statement that Lavrov's statements showed "a deliberate disregard" for the facts.

Tension in Minsk was hardly lessened by the police activity. For all of the crackdown's speed and efficiency, with hundreds of protesters being removed from their camp on October Square by riot police in less than 25 minutes early Friday, the action seemed to have done little to break the opposition's will.

Opposition members and relatives of the arrested gathered outside the walls of the pretrial detention center and cheered every time a bus with prisoners left the compound. Hands could sometimes be seen from behind the bars of the detention center's cells as prisoners waved to their peers outside.

The unrest in recent days has been small in scale but significant in its intensity, marking the first sustained public dissent in Lukashenko's 12 years of rule. Freedom of assembly and speech are almost nonexistent here, and the economy remains state-managed. For the first time, however, thousands of people have publicly defied the government for nearly an entire week.

Milinkevich called for wide sanctions against Belarussian officials, including against Belarussian television journalists he said had knowingly spread lies on state television. And he said a rally planned for Saturday on October Square would go forward, no matter how few people showed up.

The event seems certain to present a new challenge to the government, if only on a small scale. Several demonstrators who have thus far eluded arrest said they would appear on the square, against the government's orders, in a continued show of support and civil disobedience.

"We have become ripe for change," said Sergei Karievsky, 50, an architect who spent three full nights on the square but was not arrested on Friday morning because he had gone home to rest for the weekend rally. "We are no longer afraid."

One young man, who said he escaped from the crackdown early Friday by running from the police as they began seizing the demonstrators, stood on the square Friday afternoon, wearing a red- and-white button that read "For Freedom." The protester, who gave only his first name, Mikhail, said that he would be back with more demonstrators on Saturday and that he expected he would be arrested.

He said it was important to continue the opposition's struggle, but he was not sure how many people would attend, knowing that they risk their jobs and their placement in universities and may end up in jail.

"Either there will be many demonstrators or very few," he said. "It is hard to predict the reactions of people, because it is hard to live under this kind of pressure."

Source: International Herald Tribune