Tens of thousands of Belarusian protesters came today to the residence of the country's president, Alexander Lukashenko, in Minsk, demanding his resignation.
Mass demonstrations against the 26-year rule of Lukashenka entered their fifth week, and today there were protests in other major cities across the country.
Police and the army blocked off the center of Minsk today, and protesters walked to a site near the Independence Palace, Lukashenko's working residence, three kilometers outside the city center.
The authorities did not provide an estimate of the number of demonstrators, while the director of the human rights organization Vijasna said that more than 100.000 people gathered in Minsk.
Vijasnja stated that dozens of demonstrators were arrested today in Minsk and the city of Grodno.
Earlier, the Reuters agency, referring to a witness, reported that the Belarusian police had arrested dozens of demonstrators in Minsk.
Protests in Belarus, unprecedented in terms of number of participants and duration, began after the presidential elections on August 9, in which, according to the official results, Lukashenko gained the right to a sixth term, winning more than 80 percent of the vote.
Protesters say the election was rigged, and some explained to Associated Press reporters exactly how the fraud was perpetrated in their districts.
In the first days of the protests, the police dealt violently with the demonstrators, arresting more than 7.000 people and beating hundreds.
Arrests have continued to this day, but are no longer so massive.
The leader of the opposition Coordination Council, Marija Kalesnikava, told the Associated Press that "the sea of people cannot be stopped by military equipment, water cannons, propaganda and arrests."
"The majority of Belarusians want a peaceful change of government and we will not get tired of demanding it," said Kalesnikava. The coordination council was formed with the aim of starting a dialogue with Lukashenko on the change of government.
Lukashenko refuses to talk to the Council, some of the most famous members of that body were arrested, and one of them, Olga Kovalova, was expelled from the country over the weekend, when the police took her to Poland. Lukashenko (66) has ruled Belarus with a firm hand since July 1994, with repression of the opposition and independent media. He did not have a serious opponent in the elections, since the government did not approve the candidacies of his two main rivals, Valery Cepkal and Viktor Babarik.
Babariko was arrested, and Cepkalo fled to Russia after being warned that he would be arrested and that his children would be taken away. In those circumstances, his main opponent in the elections became the wife of a popular blogger who is in prison, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, a former English teacher with no political experience. Tikhanovskaya managed to unite opposition groups and attract tens of thousands of people to election rallies, the largest opposition rallies in Belarus since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
After the election, whose official results she contested, she fled to Lithuania.
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