Tens of thousands of Belarusians assemble in Minsk as an extraordinary week of rising sentiment comes to a close. ‘I made my choice and my vote was thrown in the bin, so I’ll keep coming out until our president leaves,’ said one demonstrator. Seven days after the country’s authoritarian ruler, Alexander Lukashenko, claimed to have secured 80% of the vote in a presidential election, his legitimacy is in tatters and his regime faces its biggest crisis since he came to power 26 years ago
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‘We will win’: vast Belarus rally adamant Lukashenko must go
As many as 100,000 people attend biggest protest in country’s history in defiant and euphoric mood
Looking out across the vast crowd, the protesters could not quite believe it. Was this really Belarus? How had their country changed so quickly?
A week ago in the same spot, riot police had used batons and rubber bullets to terrorise those protesting against Alexander Lukashenko’s rigged election victory. Yet despite thousands of arrests and the shocking violence meted out to so many of them, the mood in the country has turned from despair to resilience to euphoria as the week progressed.
Continue reading...Refugees crossing Channel tell of beatings by French police
Asylum seekers give accounts of injuries, as Priti Patel says many refugees feel France is racist
Asylum seekers in the UK and France have described injuries they have received at the hands of French police, as Priti Patel said many were making the perilous journey across the Channel because they believe France is racist.
The home secretary made her comments in a conference call with Conservative MPs concerned about the recent surge in numbers attempting the voyage in small boats.
Continue reading...Belarus protesters gather for biggest ever opposition rally – in pictures
Opposition protesters turned out in their tens of thousands in Minsk, while supporters of Alexander Lukashenko also held rallies
Continue reading...Tens of thousands gather in Minsk for biggest protest in Belarus history
Alexander Lukashenko claims Vladimir Putin has offered him ‘comprehensive help’
Tens of thousands of Belarusians have gathered in Minsk for the biggest protest in the country’s history, as an extraordinary week of rising sentiment comes to a close.
Seven days after the country’s authoritarian ruler, Alexander Lukashenko, claimed to have secured 80% of the vote in a presidential election, his legitimacy is in tatters and his regime faces its biggest crisis since he came to power 26 years ago. The mood at Sunday’s rally was stoked further by egregious police violence against thousands of protesters earlier in the week.
Continue reading...Why Germany would be especially happy to see the back of Trump | John Kampfner
The competence embodied in Merkel provokes loathing from the US president
Donald Trump has declared war on Germany. In a manner of speaking. Europe’s most important country, potentially America’s most valuable partner, has in the mind of the president become an adversary. Of all Trump’s many foreign policy disasters, this is perhaps his most significant.
In late July, it was announced that retired army colonel Douglas Macgregor, a decorated combat veteran, would become the next ambassador to Berlin. Macgregor is a regular contributor to Trump’s favourite channel of information, Fox News. He has variously suggested that the US border guard should shoot people if they tried to enter illegally from Mexico; described eastern Ukrainians as “Russians”; defended Serbia’s actions against a “Muslim drug mafia” in Kosovo; and criticised Germany for giving “millions of unwanted Muslim invaders” welfare benefits rather than providing more funding for its armed services.
Continue reading...Belarus’s leader pleads for Putin’s help as post-election protests grow
Alexander Lukashenko tells the Kremlin that unrest could spread to Moscow next if his regime is destabilised
The embattled Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko, has called on Vladimir Putin to help him quell the growing wave of protest inside the country, which has left his legitimacy in tatters and his regime facing its biggest crisis since he first came to power 26 years ago.
Lukashenko appealed to the Russian president’s visceral fear of revolution at home and suggested that if his regime fell, Putin too was in danger. “This is a threat not just to Belarus … if Belarusians do not hold out, the wave will head over there too,” he said in televised remarks to a meeting of advisers on Saturday, claiming that the protests were organised by shadowy figures from abroad.
Continue reading...Irish tourism chair resigns after ignoring coronavirus travel advice
Michael Cawley tenders his resignation after details of Italian holiday are revealed
The chairman of Ireland’s tourism authority has resigned after defying government guidance to avoid all non-essential travel by going on holiday to Italy.
Michael Cawley, Ryanair’s former chief operating officer, handed in his resignation on Saturday after details of his Italian excursion were revealed by the Irish Independent.
Continue reading...‘How does this make sense?’ Gatwick arrivals who missed 4am deadline
British holidaymakers returning from France express a mix of anger, resignation and confusion at 14-day quarantine order
Weary and bedraggled, the first set of quarantiners from France began arriving at Gatwick airport at 10.20am today, missing the UK deadline to get back by a handful of hours. A mix of fury, resignation and confusion descended on the north terminal as five flights from the south of France arrived within an hour.
“How does it make sense?” asked Reda, who had spent two weeks in Bordeaux with his wife Elodie and their five-year-old daughter, Sara. “Either you allow people proper time to stagger getting back or you say quarantine is effective immediately. A 12- or 24-hour deadline just means that 100,000 people rushed back one day earlier than us, they’re more high risk because of that, and we are in quarantine and they’re out in open spaces.”
Continue reading...Lukashenko and Putin say Belarus ‘problems’ will be resolved
Pressure mounts on Alexander Lukashenko to go as protests threaten to spill beyond Belarus’s borders
- Women in Belarus take protests into their own hands
- ‘It’s like a war’: armed men roam streets of Minsk
The Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko, and the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, have expressed confidence that all problems that had arisen in Belarus would soon be resolved, the Kremlin said.
“These problems should not be exploited by destructive forces seeking to harm the mutually beneficial cooperation between the two countries within the framework of the union state,” the Kremlin said in a statement on Saturday.
Continue reading...Britons in France scramble to get home before quarantine begins
Travellers left stressed and exhausted as they cut holidays short following new Covid-19 rules
At times on the A1 and A16 motorways in northern France on Friday afternoon, four out of five cars had UK plates: SUVs, estates and vans laden with luggage and children and piled high with surfboards and bikes, Brits barrelling back in a desperate bid to make it home before the 4am quarantine deadline.
Related: 'It’s killed the holiday': Britons in France react to new quarantine rules
Continue reading...‘I have destroyed my life for my children’: the families trying to cross the Channel
More families arrive in Dunkirk each day and they would rather sleep in woods than seek asylum in France
“They are kids, so they are always playing. Like children in the UK play mums and dads or doctors and nurses, our children will re-enact boat crossings, getting patted down by the police, going to food distributions, meeting smugglers. Because one of the way parents safeguard their children is to present attempted border crossings as an adventure.”
In a nature reserve near Dunkirk, Caia Fallowfield runs a play project for migrant children who live among the trees with no running water or toilets. These are the children who vanish overnight off the French coast and reappear on the front pages of British newspapers, being pulled out of dinghies in Dover, often cold, wet and frightened.
Continue reading...‘We can only help ourselves’: women in Belarus take protests into their own hands
After police beat up demonstrators, flower-waving women take to streets demanding change
The first chain of women appeared on Wednesday: a few hundred brave souls, dressed in white and holding aloft flowers, in a quietly powerful response to the gruesome violence inflicted on thousands of Belarusians over the previous days.
By the next afternoon, columns of flower-waving women were everywhere, parading along the broad avenues of central Minsk smiling, laughing and resolutely demanding political change.
Continue reading...Belarus protests resume after opposition candidate’s video from exile
President Lukashenko claims demonstrators are pawns of foreign powers as he attempts to retain grip on country
- Women in Belarus take protests into their own hands
- ‘It’s like a war’: armed men roam streets of Minsk
The standoff in Belarus appeared to be entering a decisive phase on Friday evening, as tens of thousands of protesters marched towards government buildings in central Minsk, holding flowers and signs demanding an end to violence and the resignation of president Alexander Lukashenko.
In a sign that more violence could be imminent, an angry Lukashenko appeared on television on Friday evening, ordering Belarusians not to take to the streets. “You are being used, and our children are being used, as cannon fodder,” he said, blaming shadowy forces from “Poland, the Netherlands and Ukraine” who had arrived in Russia and mentioning the anti-Kremlin politician Alexei Navalny. “Aggression against the country has already started,” he said.
Continue reading...Bulgarian PM calls for constitution overhaul in bid to quell protests
Boyko Borissov says he will step down if his plan for assembly election is approved
The Bulgarian prime minister, Boyko Borissov, has called for an overhaul of the constitution in an apparent effort to defuse weeks of anti-government protests by mostly younger Bulgarians weary of endemic corruption in the EU member state.
The three-times premier promised to resign if lawmakers approved his call for the election of a grand national assembly tasked with drafting amendments aimed, among other things, at improving the efficiency of the much-criticised judiciary.
Continue reading...Calais mayor tells Boris Johnson to ‘calm down’ over migrant crossings
Natacha Bouchart tells PM sending Navy ships into French waters is ‘a declaration of maritime war’
The mayor of the French port city of Calais has told Boris Johnson to “calm down” and change strategy in dealing with migrants crossing from France.
“I consider Boris Johnson’s pronouncements to be a provocation,” said Natacha Bouchart, mayor of the town that is a main embarkation point for the small, overcrowded migrant boats seeking to cross the Channel this summer.
Continue reading...What should I do if I have a holiday booked to France? Q&A
As France is taken off the government’s travel corridor list and new quarantine rules come into play, should UK holidaymakers cancel trips?
The UK government has removed France from its list of travel corridors, leaving hundreds of thousands of holidaymakers scrambling to rearrange their travel plans. A 14-day quarantine on return to the UK from France will come into effect from 4am on Saturday (15 August), leaving a window of little more than 30 hours for travellers to get home if they want to escape the measures.
The UK criteria for removing a country from the list is based on per capita case numbers. If these go above 20 per 100,000, the UK government categorises that country as high-risk. This Wednesday France reached 30.4, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, with significant numbers in recent days: 2,524 new cases were reported on Wednesday, up from 1,397 on Tuesday, and over 2,000 a day last weekend.
Continue reading...Irish paddle boarders survive night adrift clinging to lobster buoy
Fishermen found 17-year-old girl and 23-year-old cousin 17 miles from Galway Bay
Two paddle boarders who vanished off the west coast of Ireland survived a night of rain, wind and thunder by clinging to a lobster pot buoy.
Two fishermen found the 17-year-old girl and 23-year-old woman on Thursday two miles south of the Aran islands, about 17 miles from Galway Bay, where they were last seen on Wednesday night.
Continue reading...‘They were smashing me with batons’: detained Belarusians tell of jail abuse
Savage attacks by prison guards and riot police follow election protests as Lukashenko holds on to power
People detained in Belarus during the past few days of unrest have told the Guardian about systematic mistreatment and abuse, suggesting that guards and riot police loyal to Alexander Lukashenko’s regime have terrorised thousands of Belarusians caught up in the crackdown on recent protests.
Those detained in police stations, jails and makeshift prisons spoke of ritual beatings, up to 55 women being crammed into a cell meant for two people and men who were kept in stress positions for hours on end. Leaked audio files and other testimony has corroborated the reports of widespread torture as Lukashenko tries to hold on to power.
Continue reading...Berlin nightclub Berghain opens to all for lockdown art exhibition
Visitors can view work by likes of Olafur Eliasson and Tacita Dean and take guided tours of venue
Berlin’s legendary Berghain nightclub will relax its notoriously strict door policy for art lovers from next month as the venue turns into a gallery while the German capital’s nightlife remains on hold because of the pandemic.
Berghain, housed in an old power plant on the border between the Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg districts, will from 9 September show works produced during the Covid-19 lockdown by 85 Berlin-based artists, including established figures such as Olafur Eliasson, Tacita Dean and Wolfgang Tillmans and younger names such as Shirin Sabahi, Christine Sun Kim and Sandra Mujinga.
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