Belarusian police have arrested more than 500 protesters demanding the resignation of longtime authoritarian president Alexander Lukashenko.
Human rights protection group Vesna (Spring) stated that 530 people, including journalists and celebrities, were arrested in Minsk and other cities.
Opposition leader Svetlana Tihanovska, who took refuge in Lithuania immediately after the election to avoid arrest, said today that 90 days of protests that do not lose intensity show that Lukashenko has "lost legitimacy and power".
"He does not want to give us the right to decide what will happen in our country," Tihanovska said on the Telegram application.
On Saturday, she congratulated Joseph Biden on his victory in the US presidential elections, while Lukashenko called the US elections a "parody of democracy" and added that he does not expect a change in relations with the US regardless of the winner of the elections.
Belarus has been hit by a political crisis since the August 9 presidential election, when mass anti-government protests broke out across the country, sparked by official vote results showing Lukashenko winning more than 80 percent of the vote. Opponents of Lukashenko claim that the elections were stolen.
Despite the efforts of the authorities to suppress the demonstrations with arrests and repression of activists, mass protests have not subsided even after three months.
Lukashenko (66), who has ruled Belarus with a firm hand since July 1994, with repression of the opposition and independent media, accuses Western countries of inciting the protests.
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