Tuesday
Jul052011
Belarus Feature: Suppressing Protest...Again
Last winter we covered the Belarussian regime's repression of protest after President Aleksandr Lukashenko was officially re-elected with 80% of the vote.
We return to the story as the regime moved to prevent demonstrations on Sunday, which officially is remembered for the liberation from Germany in World War II. Thousands of police and special forces were deployed in the center of the capital Minsk, and access to social media and websites was blocked. Dozens of activists, including Stanislav Shushkevich, Belarus' first post-Soviet leader, were reportedly detained, and others were called in by the intelligence services and warned not to protest.