People are protesting against Lukashenko. Feels like foreshadowing in the year 2020.
Belarus election: Clashes after poll predicts Lukashenko re-election.
Police used stun grenades, rubber bullets and water cannon. A human rights group said one protester was killed and about 120 arrested.
- Mr Lukashenko won 80% of the vote, according to a preliminary count.
- But the main opposition leader has refused to recognise the results.
- "We have already won, because we have overcome our fear, our apathy and our indifference," Svetlana Tikhanovskaya said.
- The preliminary results give her 9.9% of the vote, but her campaign said she had been polling 70-80% in some areas.
- Ms Tikhanovskaya entered the election in place of her jailed husband and went on to lead large opposition rallies.
- Mr Lukashenko, 65, has been in power since 1994.
Lukashenko, right-wing tinpot who rules a country that the west has no particular interest in, in a state with no real ideology besides being a vestigial attachment to a more powerful Russian right winger.
Lukashenko says Svetlana Tikhanovskaya and Belarus’ opposition “aren’t even worth repressing.”
You wouldn’t know it from all the military vehicles in Minsk, detentions if activists and journalists, and threats that forced his opponents to flee the country. If the other Color Revolutions are any guide. Expect the usual suspects to start blaming NATO.
Grim first-hand account of the police violence in Belarus last night by one of the few reporters let into the country to cover its disputed election.