br23 blog - minsk, belarus

October square was blocked by several layers of the police cordon today. Thousands of people couldn’t get through and went to Janka Kupala park instead, where the demonstration took place. The estimated number people there was 20,000-30,000. Then people decided to go to the jail on Akrescina, to demand freedom to hundreds of political prisoners […]

Hundreds of people were sentenced to 10-15 day administrative arrests today. Courts will be working tomorrow, on a Saturday, which I don’t remember ever happening in Belarus.
More than 100 parents still can’t locate their children. They are worried. Mothers are crying. They’ve been waiting in front of the jail gates the whole day, and nobody […]

English headline: Riot police break up Belarus demo
Russian translation: Belarusian revolutionaries ran out of fuel
English opening paragraph: “Some 200 protesters were arrested and loaded on to waiting trucks after around 100 troops surrounded October Square in the capital Minsk in the early hours.”
Russian translation: “Belarusian police carried out a preventive operation on October square. […]

POLICE STORMED AND DESTROYED THE CAMP. HUNDREDS ARRESTED.

more photos

Police still employs the same tactics. They stealthily arrests people when they leave October square, usually in underground passages and subway entrance.
Amnesty International estimated the number of arrested people at 400.

Today, protesters tried to bring in mobile bio-toilets. At that moment police attacked them and started beating them up. One of the youngsters lost consciousness […]

Since Alexander Lukashenka banned exit polls in Belarus, and since the official votes are massively falsified and no one even counted the ballots, there’s no way to know how people of Belarus actually voted on March 19.
Well. Except for exit polls abroad, at the embassies. You can get a general picture of the scale of […]

People are still on the October square. The number of participants fluctuates from 6000-7000 (at around 6-7PM) down to about 500 people (at 5-6AM, the coldest time). Police is still blocking the square, searching through every bag, and not letting people with food and hot drinks to get through. People with blankets and tents get […]

• radioopensource.org/belarus-more-soviet-than-the-russians
Last night I took part in a talk show on Radio Open Source. That was my first radio appearance in a foreign language (English). I sort of hate my East Slavic accent, but I’ve always been too lazy to work on phonetics. Well, I hope people could understand what I was saying. (mp3)
Doctor […]

Finally, Belarus made it to the top news on CNN International, both on TV and on their website Belarus elections and protesters on October square in Minsk were their #1 top news for several hours this morning.
Here are the screen shots:

CNN did a great job. This looked so good on TV. And the anchor’s text […]

Police arrests all those who try to go to the October square with big bags, food and hot drinks. That’s the tacticts they chose: they don’t touch the people on the October square, but they sort of put it under siege, hoping that people will freeze, starve and go home.
So far, there are conflicting reports […]