Over 100 people detained during Sunday protests in Belarus: Rights group
Minsk/Sputnik: Belarusian police have detained at least 104 people attending the Sunday anti-government protests across the country, the Viasna human rights center said in a news release.
The Belarusian opposition holds mass rallies weekly on Sundays, each of them resulting in multiple detentions.
The center published a spreadsheet on its website with information about the known detentions, including names and sites of arrest. The list currently includes 104 people, detained predominantly in Minsk, but also in such cities as Grodno and Brest.
Among people listed as detained in Grodno are journalists of local news agency BelaPAN Sergey Lyudkevich and Maria Khorevich. According to the rights center's list, there is also a 73-year-old woman, opposition activist Nina Baginskaya, among those detained in Minsk.
Earlier in the day, two Russian journalists were briefly detained and let go in Minsk, where they covered the rallies.
Mass protests began in Belarus after the presidential election on August 9, which, according to the official results, incumbent President Alexander Lukashenko won by a landslide, securing himself a sixth consecutive term in office. The opposition refused to recognize the results, claiming electoral fraud.
Over the past few weeks, the format of opposition protests in Minsk has changed — instead of calling one massive rally across the city center, protesters gather for smaller demonstrations scattered across the city's residential areas. Police and security forces with special equipment are normally being deployed to these spots in the morning of the protest day.
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