Crushing Liberty's Cry

• Share

In Belarus, March 25 is celebrated as Liberty Day, commemorating the short-lived independent People's Republic of Belarus, proclaimed in 1918, but crushed by Russia's Bolsheviks six months later. This year, the anniversary was marked by a protest rally against the poll held six days earlier, in which — according to official figures — President Alexander Lukashenko, first elected in 1994, won 82.6% of the votes.

Lukashenko's opposition, which considers the election results fraudulent and had been holding peaceful protests all week, had planned to hold the March 25 rally in Oktyabrskaya Square, in the center of the capital city, Minsk. The square had been the site of a tented camp that police destroyed on March 24, when they arrested 328 activists, bringing the number detained since the election to more than 1,000. Opposition leaders insist that the Liberty Day protest was intended to be peaceful. "We're not planning any violence, any taking of the Bastille," said Alexander Milinkevich, a presidential candidate and opposition leader, before the march. "I hope the authorities understand this."

Evidently not. As protesters started coming to the square, they found that it was blocked by riot police in full gear, forcing them into the nearby Yanka Kupala park. "There were some 20,000 of us packed in the park," Irina Khalip, a Belarusian journalist and human-rights activist, told Time by telephone. "The people were angry with the rigged election, mass arrests and inhuman treatment of the detainees." Khalip says that Alexander Kozulin, a key opposition leader and a presidential candidate in the election, led a protest march to the jail in Okrestina Street. Then things turned violent. "My husband walked up to the commanding officer smiling and with flowers in hand," Irina Kozulin told TIME in a call from Minsk. "But before he started talking, the officer ordered an attack. They knocked my husband off his feet, started beating him up and then dragged him away." In the melee that followed, many protesters were beaten up, stunned by percussion grenades or affected by tear gas.

Last week, both the U.S. and European Union condemned Lukashenko's regime, with the E.U. banning him from travel to member states of the Union and the Bush Administration calling for the early release of those detained since the election. Belarus, said the E.U., was a "sad exception" to the condition of democracy in Europe.