Government News: Top Stories

700 arrested in Belarus, 2 candidates freed
by Yuras Karmanau

The Associated Press Translate This Article
21 December 2010

MINSK, Belarus (AP) - A presidential candidate arrested after Belarus' weekend election says the KGB tried to pressure him into renouncing his opposition to the country's authoritarian regime.

Grigory Kostusyev spoke Tuesday as opposition figures tried to rally after the arrests of seven of the nine opposition challengers to President Alexander Lukashenko and the detentions of nearly 700 protesters.

Many were seized when riot police clashed with thousands of demonstrators outside the main government building to protest alleged fraud in Sunday's vote. The preliminary count gave Lukashenko nearly 80 percent of the vote, but international observers say the count was seriously flawed.

Kostusyev said he was freed late Monday as well as another arrested candidate, Dmitry Uss. He said he was held by the KGB, as the ex-Soviet republic's security service is still called, and 'interrogated toughly' but not physically abused.

'They wanted me to renounce and publicly condemn my colleagues ... but after I refused to do this, they let me go,' he told a news conference.

Lukashenko, often called Europe's last dictator, has been in power more than 16 years. He exercises overwhelming control over politics, industry and media in this nation of 10 million bordering Poland and the Baltic nations. The repression has been an embarrassment to the European Union, which offered 3 billion euros ($3.9 billion) in aid to Belarus if the elections were judged to be free and fair.

Alexander Milinkevich, who ran against Lukashenko in the 2006 election, said activists hope to protest Tuesday night outside the jail where many are believed to be held.

'The dictator has made the opposition unified,' Milinkevich declared. 'We're not in depression. We are continuing the fight.'

The arrested include the most prominent challengers to Lukashenko: candidates Vladimir Neklyayev and Andrei Sannikov. Neklyayev was beaten by men in civilian clothes as he tried to lead supporters into central Minsk for the protest; he was hospitalized but later taken away by unidentified men who wrapped him in a blanket. Lukashenko confirmed Monday that Neklyayev was being held in a KGB prison.

On Tuesday, Ales Belyatsky of the Belarusian human rights organization Vesna said some 700 people had been arrested. Lukashenko earlier gave the figure as 639.

The other presidential candidates still in custody were Nikolai Statkevich, Vitaly Rymashevsky and Ales Mikhalevich. Candidates Yaroslav Romanchuk and Viktor Tereshchenko were not detained.

The large number of arrests, the images of club-swinging riot police smashing demonstrators, and the suspiciously high vote count for Lukashenko have prompted sharp criticism from the West and are likely to undermine his attempts to improve relations with EU countries.

Prior to the election, Lukashenko had frequently criticized Russia, which angered him by raising prices for the once-cheap oil and natural gas that are the bedrock of Belarus' Soviet-style state-controlled economy. But Russia this month agreed to drop tariffs for oil exports.

Kostusyev contended that Sunday's clashes were part of a Russian plan to bring Belarus back into the Kremlin's sphere of influence.

'I'm convinced that these provocations with the use of force were created by the Kremlin, which was frightened by Lukashenko's dialogue with the West—and Lukashenko fell into the trap and now doesn't know what to do,' he said.

___

Associated Press writer Jim Heintz in Minsk contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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