Belarus police crush protests as ruler claims landslide win in polls

Riot police detained thousands of protesters in Belarus in clashes after Alexander Lukashenko claimed a landslide victory in presidential elections to extend his 26-year rule amid opposition accusations of massive fraud.
 

About 3,000 people were held by law enforcement including 1,000 in the capital, Minsk, the Interior Ministry said Monday in a website statement. Protests took place in 33 cities and towns overnight, and more than 50 citizens and 39 police were injured during confrontations, it said. Police using water cannon and flash grenades faced crowds of protesters in Minsk after state TV had declared Lukashenko the winner of Sunday’s vote. One person died and three were injured after a security vehicle hit protesters, the Viasna human rights group said. The Interior Ministry said nobody died during the disturbances.
 

Lukashenko won 80.2 per cent against 9.9 per cent for the main opposition challenger, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the Central Election Commission reported Monday. Turnout was 84 per cent, it said. Belarus’s dollar-denominated debt due in 2031 fell for the third straight day on Monday, pushing the yield to 6.87 per cent, the highest this month.
 

Lukashenko, 65, a former Soviet collective farm boss, had faced unprecedented protests against his rule before the vote, after opposition groups united behind Tikhanovskaya, a 37-year-old former teacher, when other contenders were either jailed or kept off the ballot.
 

The stay-at-home mother, who ran after her husband Sergei, a political blogger, was detained and barred from the race, drew huge crowds at rallies nationwide.

Lukashenko’s 26-Year Grip on Presidency
 

Another widely disputed presidential election result in Belarus has led to mass protests against the Lukashenko government. Despite monitoring organisation Golos calculating the main challenger, Tikhanovskaya, to have received 80 per cent of the vote (from over one million ballots counted), the official result has been given in the opposite direction, with the incumbent being assigned a preliminary 80.2 per cent by the Central Election Commission of Belarus.