Lawyer was one of few remaining leading members of coordination council still free

Belarusian authorities have detained one of the last leading members of an opposition council who remained free, moving methodically to end a month of protests against President Alexander Lukashenko.

Lawyer Maxim Znak, a member of the coordination council created by the opposition to facilitate talks with the country’s leader of 26 years 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.

Similar marches held in other cities including Brest a month after disputed election

Huge protests have taken place across Belarus against the embattled regime of Alexander Lukashenko, with demonstrators marching on the president’s residence in the capital, Minsk, for a fourth weekend in a row.

More than 100,000 people filled Minsk’s Independence Avenue calling for Lukashenko to step down. There were similar marches in other cities, including Brest, Vitebsk and Grodno.

Factory strike leader and Tikhanovskaya aide held as Lukashenko releases video of himself armed with rifle

Belarusian authorities arrested two opposition leaders on Monday, as a showdown between the authoritarian president, Alexander Lukashenko, and a broad coalition of protesters continued into a third week.

Police detained Sergei Dylevsky, a factory worker who has become a prominent strike leader, and Olga Kovalkova, an aide to Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the opposition politician who stood against Lukashenko in elections earlier this month but was forced to flee the country after the vote.

Protesters remain defiant but there is a sense of foreboding as embattled Lukashenko digs in

“During this week, we have lived many lives,” Maria Kolesnikova, one of the leaders of the Belarusian opposition, said in a video address to supporters on Friday. “For a week, Belarusians have been on an emotional seesaw: pain, fear, rising spirits, apathy, pride, helplessness, hope and happiness.”

Life in Belarus has indeed been an emotionally exhausting experience in recent days, as rapid swings in momentum seemingly change the atmosphere overnight. Peaks of adrenaline, when the 26-year regime of Alexander Lukashenko seems to be tottering on the edge of the precipice, quickly give way to troughs of despair. And then the cycle begins again.

Investigation begun into ‘calls for actions aimed at undermining national security’

Prosecutors in Belarus have accused the opposition of trying to seize power and opened a criminal case against them, as protests against the 26-year regime of Alexander Lukashenko continue.

The announcement raises the possibility of trials and jail time for the leaders of a coordination council, set up this week, that includes opposition politicians, factory representatives and the Nobel prize-winning author Svetlana Alexievich.

Svetlana Tikhanovskaya is appealing to EU leaders to disregard the results of the election on 9 August, calling them fraudulent. In the statement issued from Lithuania, where she is exiled, she said: 'I call on you to support the awakening of Belarus'. Tikhanovskaya claimed the election results were falsified and protesters had been beaten and tortured

More than a week after a sham election, public rage has not died down

“And what is it, what is it that they want / Centuries despised: those deaf, blind ones? / To be called people.” These words by Janka Kupala, Belarus’s national poet, published in the early 1900s, have come to mind in recent days as protests have rippled through the nation. Twenty-six years after Alexander Lukashenko came to power in the Republic of Belarus’ first and last democratic elections – almost immediately stripping the country of any ambitions to recover its national language, democratic process or historic myths and symbols after more than 70 years under the Soviet yoke – Belarus and Belarusians are seeing for the first time a fighting chance at meaningful politics and civic rights. Make no mistake, a people once described as the “dark, despised ones” (ciomny, pahardžany narod) have crossed a point of no return.

Olga Shparaga, a leading Belarusian political philosopher (whom I work alongside at the European College of Liberal Arts), described the emotions of fellow protesters in a phone conversation last Wednesday morning: “People are completely infuriated, ready to go wherever they need. This is not the time to think, but to act.” The protests followed the sham election on 9 August: the election commission gave Lukashenko approximately 80% of the vote when in all likelihood the main opposition actually won by a landslide. Unable to take these lies any longer, Belarusians took to the polling stations and streets in peaceful protest, only to be brutally attacked, gassed and shot at by riot police.