Belarusian authorities have detained one of the last leading members of an opposition council who had remained free, moving methodically to end a month of protests against President Alexander Lukashenko.
Maxim Znak, a lawyer and member of the coordination council created by the opposition to facilitate talks with the country’s leader on a transition of power, was taken out of the council’s office by unidentified people in ski masks, his associate Gleb German said. He said Znak only had time to text message “masks” before they took the phone away from him.
Unidentified people were also trying to enter the apartment of the last member of the council’s executive presidium who remained free, Svetlana Alexievich, who won the 2015 Nobel prize in literature.
Last month Alexievich was questioned by Belarusian investigators, who have opened a criminal investigation into members of the coordination council, accusing them of undermining national security by calling for a transfer of power. Several council members were arrested and others were forcibly expelled from the country.
Maria Kolesnikova, a leading member of the council, was detained on Monday in the capital Minsk along with two other council members and then driven early on Tuesday to the border, where authorities told them to cross into Ukraine.
When they arrived in a no man’s land between the countries, Kolesnikova ripped her passport into small pieces to make it impossible for the authorities to expel her. She remained in custody on the Belarusian side of the border after the incident, but her whereabouts were unclear.
Lukashenko has dismissed the opposition as western stooges and rejected demands from the US and European Union to engage in a dialogue with protesters, who see his 9 August re-election as rigged and demand his resignation.
After a brutal crackdown by police in the initial days after the vote that stoked international outrage and swelled the ranks of protesters, authorities in Belarus have switched to threats and selective arrests of activists and demonstrators.
Late on Tuesday, police dispersed a few hundred demonstrators rallying in Minsk in solidarity with Kolesnikova and detained at least 45 protesters, according to the Viasna human rights centre.
In Washington, the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, issued a statement expressing concern about the attempt to expel Kolesnikova and warning that the US and its allies were considering sanctions against Belarus.
source https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/09/belarus-opposition-figure-maxim-znak-taken-from-office-by-masked-men
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