Belarus jails protesters after crackdown

Belarus on Monday jailed several among the almost 400 protesters arrested in a brutal police crackdown on Independence Day protests against strongman President Alexander Lukashenko's regime. The Vyasna rights group said 210 people were arrested in the capital Minsk where hundreds took part in Sunday's protests, while another 180 were seized in other parts of the country, including the regional centres of Grodno, Gomel and Mogilev. Vyasna's spokesman Valentin Stefanovich said 140 people in Minsk alone spent the night in jail and were to appear before courts on charges of hooliganism. By late Monday afternoon, 20 people had been handed jail sentences of up to 15 days in prison while dozens of others awaited their turn in packed courtrooms. Several hearings were put off to Tuesday. "The authorities must immediately free all those detained and ensure freedom of assembly for citizens and stop the shameful practice of beating and detaining the participants in rallies," Vyasna said. Responding to calls for a rally by the Internet-based group "Revolution through the Social Network", the protesters defied warnings and state jamming of websites to turn out on Sunday evening. They sought to show their dissatisfaction with Lukashenko by clapping their hands. But police arrested anyone who joined in the applause, beating activists and firing tear gas, an AFP correspondent in Minsk said. Most of the arrests were carried out by police in plain-clothes who mingled with protesters, with only electronic earpieces betraying their affiliation to the security forces. The agents roughly bundled protesters into sinister brown prison vans known as avtozaki in which they were driven to a nearby detention centre. Lukashenko launched a crackdown on the opposition -- unprecedented even in his 17 years of authoritarian rule -- after mass protests on the evening of his landslide re-election victory in December. The hardline tactics against demonstrators provoked international outrage in recent weeks, especially as the protesters have staged deliberately low-key "silent" rallies with no slogans or banners. Speaking in neighbouring Lithuania last week, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Belarus must "release political prisoners and embark on the path of democratic reform". Dozens of opposition activists have already been imprisoned, including Lukashenko's leading rival in the elections, former diplomat Andrei Sannikov who was jailed for five years. In an Independence Day speech Sunday to mark the anniversary of Minsk's liberation from Nazi occupation, Lukashenko warned his opponents not to harbour dreams of the so-called "colour revolutions" that swept other ex-Soviet states in recent years. "They want to put us on our knees and reduce our independence to zero. This will not happen!" he said. Dressed in a military uniform, Lukashenko watched a military parade accompanied, as is now customary, by his young extra-marital son Kolya in similar attire. Opposition media pointed out that the boy, believed to be six, had the ranking stripes of a top military commander. The opposition had hoped to drown out Lukashenko's speech with their hand-clapping but failed to make any impact amid a massive security presence. Ironically, no-one present, including those in the VIP stands, dared to applaud Lukashenko's speech for fear of being taken for a covert supporter of the opposition. Opposition politician Stanislav Shushkevich, who led Belarus from independence in 1991 until he was ousted in 1994, was briefly detained by border police at the weekend as he travelled on a train from the Lithuanian capital Vilnius. Compounding the political tensions, Belarus is also battling a mounting economic crisis which last week saw it impose price caps on all consumer goods to fight spiralling inflation and suffer a temporary cut in power supplies from Russia.