Word: lukashenko
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After five days of protests against the reelection of Alexander Lukashenko as President of Belarus, police early Friday morning arrested hundreds in an improvised tent camp in downtown Minsk, installed there as a token of popular protest against an election widely described as fraudulent and unrecognized by the U.S. TIME's Yuri Zarakhovich discussed the overnight crackdown in a phone interview with Professor Alexander Kozulin, a presidential candidate from the opposition Social-Democratic Hramada party and one of the two top opposition leaders in Belarus...
...Kozulin: Lukashenko's lost his nerve. Tomorrow, Saturday, March 25, is a major national holiday, albeit unrecognized officially - the anniversary of the Belarus People's Republic, our independent state, proclaimed back in 1918 and destroyed several months later. Lots of people always gather to mark this day. Now, the anniversary coincided with mass election fraud protests. The opposition has called upon the people to come to the square en masse to protest. The authorities were scared that this "pathetic tent camp" worked as a toehold for the dozens of thousands who would show up tomorrow - and turn Minsk into...
...Kozulin: Now they will cordon the square off and try to keep the people out. But the people will be coming tomorrow anyway. We have always called for peaceful protests, but now Lukashenko provokes violence. He will bear the entire responsibility, should it happen. The authorities should have learned to listen to their people. But they are provoking violence instead. This only proves once again that they are illegitimate, and that this "election" was a fraudulent farce...
...Kozulin: A legitimately elected President does not have to react so cowardly. Lukashenko has overstepped all the boundaries. He is a menace to his own people. He has been scared of a revolution, but what he does not understand is that he has triggered that revolution himself. His abuse of power has triggered the most important revolution of all - the one in people's minds. Even many of those who had sided with him are now indignant at this rape of the Constitution and crackdown on the people...
...Kozulin: The U.S. and the E.U. stands have been very encouraging. However, it is important that they remain consistent positions, rather than just one-time declared stands. All the possibilities of talking with Lukashenko have been exhausted; he understands only the language of force. He is not a menace just to his own country; he is a menace to the world. If the international community wants to defuse this menace, the Belarusian issue must be brought to the U.N. Security Council and raised at the G-8 summit, planned in St. Petersburg, Russia in July. Otherwise, this summit will...