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KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Belarus’ authorities on Monday handed a jail sentence to a factory strike organizer and detained a main opposition activist, phase of a methodical effort to stifle weeks of protests against the country’s authoritarian leader after an election the opposition says was rigged.
President Alexander Lukashenko, who has dominated the 9.5-million nation with an iron fist for 26 years, has dismissed the protesters as Western puppets and rejected the European Union’s provides of mediation. After a ferocious crackdown on demonstrators within the first days after the Aug. 9 presidential vote that precipitated global outrage, his executive has averted huge-scale violence against demonstrators and switched to threats and the selective jailing of activists to stem the protests.
Anatoly Bokun, who leads the strike committee at Belaruskali, a huge potash factory in Soligorsk, was detained by police Monday and handed a 15-day jail sentence on costs of organizing an unsanctioned disclose. The factory, which accounts for a fifth of the enviornment’s potash fertilizer output, is the nation’s high cash earner.
The Belaruskali strike committee spokesman, Gleb Sandras, mentioned authorities had managed to forestall a strike on the factory that began two weeks within the past and all its potash mines are now working. He mentioned brokers of Belarus’ Converse Security Committee, which soundless goes by the Soviet-period name KGB, had compelled workers to full the strike.
“KGB brokers have inundated the factory, tracking down the most crammed with life workers and using diverse manner of rigidity,” Sandras suggested The Linked Press. “The authorities have powerful economic devices. They’re blackmailing workers with mass dismissals.”
Strikes at Belaruskali and loads other main industrial flora have forged an unprecedented protest to Lukashenko, who has saved the extensive majority of the economy in utter arms and relied on blue-collar workers as his most important toughen outrageous.
Belarus Deputy Top Minister Yuri Nazarov acknowledged Monday that the strikes posed an topic, but mentioned all most important industrial flora have resumed not unique operations.
Bokun’s detention follows the arrests of strike leaders at two other most important industrial flora in Minsk final week. The organizer of a strike on the Grodno Azot, a most important producer of nitrogen fertilizers, fled to Poland to get away detention.
Looking out out for to stem the protests, Belarusian prosecutors have opened a legal probe against the opposition Coordination Council created to negotiate a transition of energy, accusing its members of undermining the country’s security.
Last week, Belarusian courts handed 10-day jail sentences to two council members and summoned several others for questioning, including Svetlana Alexievich, who won the 2015 Nobel Prize in literature. One other council member, Lilia Vlasova, was detained Monday.
“Right here’s the executive’s response to our soundless actions and provides of dialogue,” council member Maria Kolesnikova suggested the AP. “It manner that protests will develop.”
On Monday, Lukashenko ordered the dismissal of Belarus’ ambassador to Spain, Pavel Pustavy, who in a Facebook post referred to as for a relate of the election and criticized the beating of soundless demonstrators. Belarus earlier dismissed its ambassadors to Slovakia and India for expressing toughen for the protesters.
Belarusian authorities on Monday furthermore denied entry to Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz, the 74-365 days-extinct archbishop of Minsk and Mohilev., maintaining him looking ahead to hours on the border before turning him relieve to Poland. Last week, Kondrusiewicz strongly criticized the Belarusian police.
Each the U.S. and the EU have criticized the Aug. 9 election that prolonged Lukashenko’s rule as neither free nor pretty and urged Belarusian authorities to chat with the opposition — calls that the 66-365 days-extinct leader has rejected.
On Monday, the EU’s Baltic members —Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia — slapped hump sanctionson 30 high Belarusian officers, including Lukashenko. EU foreign ministers are making ready their very grasp sanctions against as much as 20 senior Belarus officers suspected of election fraud and the violent crackdown on protesters.
Belarus’ International Ministry spokesman, Anatoly Glaz, warned that Minsk would retaliate. Last week, Lukashenko threatened to acknowledge by redirecting the drift of Belarusian imports by strategy of Lithuanian ports and blocking the transit of European cargo all the plan in which thru Belarus.
To boot to day-to-day protests, the opposition held one more huge rally on Sunday, which seen an estimated 100,000 of us flood the streets of Minsk amid a heavy police presence.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman, Steffen Seibert, hailed the protesters’ courage and urged Lukashenko on Monday to “acknowledge the real fact within the country — there needs to be an originate dialogue between the leadership, opposition forces and all of Belarusian society to bring a pair of soundless resolution.”
Yet on Monday, Lukashenko bluntly dismissed the opposition’s push to restore the country’s earlier constitution, which envisaged huge parliamentary powers.
A fierce clampdown on soundless demonstrators after the vote seen nearly 7,000 detained, hundreds wounded by police rubber bullets, stun grenades and beatings, and on the least three protesters ineffective. Police then let the demonstrations go unhindered for the next two weeks, but final week all yet again cranked up the rigidity on demonstrators.
Over the weekend, the Belarusian executive furthermore cracked down laborious on the tips media, deporting some foreign journalists and revoking the accreditation of many Belarusian journalists. Two Moscow-based totally Linked Press journalists holding the protests in Belarus have been deported to Russia on Saturday. To boot, the AP’s Belarusian journalists have been suggested that their press credentials had been revoked.
The Belarusian Affiliation of Journalists mentioned accreditation rights have been furthermore taken a ways flung from 17 Belarusians working for other media, including Germany’s ARD television, the BBC, Reuters and AFP. The U.S.-funded radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty had five journalists lose their accreditation.
The U.S. and the EU have strongly condemned the Belarus executive’s media crackdown.
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Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow, Geir Moulson in Berlin and Liudas Dapkus in Vilnius, Lithuania contributed to this file.
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