Belarus cracks down on anti-government march

Hundreds of peaceful protesters have been arrested in the Belarus capital Minsk, police clamped down hard on the latest of a series of anti-government demonstrations in the country known as “Europe’s last dictatorship”.

Local human rights watchdogs and lawyers estimated that as many as 630 people were detained, with many reportedly beaten, although some were already being released by Saturday evening. As many as 30 journalists were also held, a local journalists’ association said.

Police with water cannon blocked off part of the centre of the capital where protesters gathered in defiance of a ban on the gathering, but several hundred still tried to march along the capital’s main avenue.

“They’re beating the participants, dragging women by the hair to buses,” Alexander Ponomarev, one of the protesters, told the Associated Press.

Smaller rallies also took place in the cities of Brest and Grodno.

We have seen peaceful protesters viciously beaten on the streets of Minsk today and an elderly woman knocked to the ground by riot police

The protests were the latest in a series of demonstrations against a $230 tax on citizens working less than six months a year, known locally as the tax on “social parasites”.

The wave of unrest is the most significant challenge in years to president Alexander Lukashenko, the authoritarian leader who has ruled Belarus since the mid-1990s.

The president suspended implementation of the law for a year. But his move failed to quell the protests amid widespread discontent over falling living standards after a two-year recession.

Mr Lukashenko and law and order forces had repeatedly signalled they would take a hard line against protests planned for Saturday — the anniversary of the creation of the shortlived independent Belarusian People’s Republic in 1918, known locally as Freedom Day.

Protesters waved the red-and-white flag of the republic, chanting slogans including “Shame” and “Enough”.

Amnesty International called on the Belarusian authorities to “immediately and unconditionally release all those arrested before and during the protests and end their vicious crackdown”.

“Freedom Day proves this year, more than ever, how little genuine freedom the people of Belarus have,” said Denis Krivosheev, deputy director for Europe and Central Asia at the group. “We have seen peaceful protesters viciously beaten on the streets of Minsk today and an elderly woman knocked to the ground by riot police.”

The Belarus president earlier in the week accused a “fifth column” in the country of working with foreign agents to try to topple him. He warned before the weekend protests that there would be “no Ukraine scenario” in Belarus, in a reference to the anti-government demonstrations that overthrew president Viktor Yanukovich in 2014.

The comments prepared the way for Saturday’s clampdown, which included what Amnesty called “authoritarian tactics” of preventive detentions and arbitrary arrests.

More than 100 opposition supporters were taken into custody in the days before the protests. The opposition’s former presidential candidate Vladimir Nekliayev was detained on Friday night in Brest as he tried to make his way to the Minsk rally.

The EU last year lifted sanctions on dozens of top Belarus officials including Mr Lukashenko amid hopes of a political thaw. But rights groups noted that the number of arrests on Saturday was similar to those that spurred the EU to impose the sanctions after a violent crackdown following presidential elections in 2010.