MINSK, Belarus,
March 25 — Riot police dispersed a fresh challenge to President Aleksandr
G. Lukashenko on Saturday, blocking thousands of antigovernment
demonstrators from reaching the central square in the capital and later
arresting a top opposition leader.
The leader, Aleksandr V. Kazulin, was seized as he marched with hundreds of
supporters on a prison where opposition members are held. The police also shoved
and beat many of the protesters while they gathered on the sidewalks in the
capital's center. Dozens of people were arrested, the opposition said.
Before the police seized Mr. Kazulin, one of the candidates who had
challenged Mr. Lukashenko in the recent election, the two sides had been
jostling throughout the day to show their strength, and the opposition displayed
surprising resolve in the first hour.
Despite hundreds of arrests during the week and a police crackdown in which
many of the most active members of the opposition have been detained, at least
6,000 people appeared at noon in central Minsk, where they were met by phalanxes
of riot police with clubs. Some demonstrators carried flowers. They chanted
"Truth! Truth! Truth!" and "Freedom! Freedom!"
After being blocked from October Square during a tense hour of confrontations
with formations of riot police, the crowd dispersed and reassembled at a nearby
Yanka Kupala Park, where another opposition leader said they would not cease in
their campaign of civil disobedience against Mr. Lukashenko and his autocratic
government.
"What is going on in Belarus can be compared to the storm of a fortress,"
said Aleksandr Milinkevich, the principal challenger to Mr. Lukashenko in the
election this month. "This was the first storm. We will use peaceful methods. We
will surround that fortress and we will not retreat."
In time, he said, "We will turn that fortress upside down."
Later, when demonstrators led by Mr. Kazulin marched on the prison,
participants said the police dispersed them using stun grenades. Mr. Kazulin was
arrested by a team of special forces officers who rushed him and snatched him
from the crowd, witnesses said.
The police also arrested Mr. Milinkevich's spokesman in a separate
confrontation. He was later released. The charges against Mr. Kazulin were not
immediately clear.
The unauthorized rallies continued a week of small but intensive public
defiance against Mr. Lukashenko, who is often called Europe's last dictator and
whose police state, an island of Soviet nostalgia and Communist ideology, is
feared by citizens for its brutality.
Mr. Lukashenko was re-elected on March 19 in a vote the West and the
opposition regard as rigged, and the United States has called for a new vote and
said it will impose penalties against Mr. Lukashenko and his top officials. The
European
Union has also said it will seek penalties.
For the first time in 12 years of Mr. Lukashenko's rule, people have carried
out sustained demonstrations against him, including four nights of continuous
protests on October Square, before the riot police conducted a mass arrest of
hundreds of demonstrators early on Friday morning.
Mr. Milinkevich had called for another demonstration on Saturday, an
unofficial holiday celebrating a brief period of Belarussian independence in
1918.
The turnout on Saturday in the face of police violence suggested that the
opposition had far more support than Mr. Lukashenko had conceded in his derisive
public remarks.
The protesters, who have modeled their effort in part after freedom movements
against Communist or post-Soviet governments in Poland, Serbia, Georgia, Ukraine
and elsewhere, were young and old, men and women. They called loudly for a new
way of life, free of state repression and with integration with the West, which
Mr. Lukashenko loathes.
In a move reminiscent of Soviet times, the authorities said protesters were
not allowed to walk on October Square because the ice on the skating rink there
was being removed for spring. The demonstrators rejected the explanation as
another official lie.
They massed on the sidewalks near the square, waved flowers and banned
Belarussian flags, and shouted at the police: "Shame! Shame! Shame!" As their
numbers grew they began to push, at one point forcing a line of police half a
block backward, and almost reaching the square's edge.
But the police reinforced themselves swiftly, and thick lines of officers
jogged into place and stopped the advance. The demonstrators also briefly
blocked traffic two times at one of Minsk's main intersections, but were forced
away within minutes by police charges.
More police reinforcements arrived, and began plunging into the crowd in
platoon-sized formations, separating it into smaller groups that were then
forced to move away.
Many demonstrators in the front rows were beaten, punched or kicked, but the
officers did not seem as interested in arresting them as they were in clearing
them from Independence Avenue, one of Minsk's principal streets. Once the crowd
backed away the officers did not pursue it. As the demonstrators gave ground,
they jeered at the dense formations of officers, clad in black, on whom they
said the government had spent extravagant sums to protect itself from its own
people.
"This is where our money goes," said Galina Apalko, 23, a student, before
being chased back half a block by a rushing line of police.
Another protester cursed them as they rushed past her.
"These special forces — they are black cockroaches," said one stooped and
elderly pensioner, who gave only her first name, Maria. "They are hirelings. My
parents were oppressed. I am oppressed. I hate this power."
Mr. Milinkevich said in an interview in the evening that it was possible the
authorities might arrest him as well, but that he would continue to organize
peaceful resistance.
He disapproved of Mr. Kazulin's march on the prison, saying that marching on
a secure building was too provocative, and that demonstrators should try to
assemble in public spaces. "I am categorically against such actions," he said.
"It is important for us to show that we are not aggressive, that we are for only
peaceful acts. Then we attract more people and we can grow."
Mr. Milinkevich said the opposition's next attempt at mass public assembly
would be April 26, the 20th anniversary of the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl,
which blanketed much of Belarus with radioactive waste.
He said he would be working with volunteers to mobilize more people to
demonstrate on that day, using his supporters to spread the word in small
meetings, e-mail messages and fliers. Gathering public supporters here is
difficult, as students have been threatened with expulsion and workers with
dismissal for participating in opposition events.
There is also virtually no independent news media in Belarus, and television
is run by Mr. Lukashenko's centralized state, making it difficult for opposition
organizers to circulate word of their actions. Still, Mr. Milinkevich has been
confident in recent days, saying that Belarussians are shedding their fear, and
that Mr. Lukashenko will be chased from power before the end of his five-year
term.
As has been the case all week, state television belittled the opposition and
the demonstrators, saying on the news that they were agents of foreign
governments.
"Today, the ex-candidates who lost the elections call on a storm of state
offices, the forced seizure of power and a push to bloodshed in the streets of
Minsk," the presenter on BT television station said.
"As it became known to us from informed circles, the organization of riots in
the streets of Minsk is taking place in accordance with the instructions
received from the European Union."
