2011年7月4日星期一

Belarus Cracks Down on Clapping Protesters

在 ServiceModel 客户端配置部分中,找不到引用协定“TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因为未找到应用程序的配置文件,或者是因为客户端元素中找不到与此协定匹配的终结点元素。
在 ServiceModel 客户端配置部分中,找不到引用协定“TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因为未找到应用程序的配置文件,或者是因为客户端元素中找不到与此协定匹配的终结点元素。
Tatyana Zenkovich/European Pressphoto AgencyThe police arrested a demonstrator in Minsk on Sunday, Belarus's Independence Day. The authorities are engaged in the harshest clampdown of President Aleksandr Lukashenko's tenure.

MOSCOW — The police in Belarus used tear gas to disperse protesters on Sunday after President Aleksandr Lukashenko, presiding over a ceremony to commemorate Belarus’s Independence Day, said in a speech that shadowy forces based in “the capitals of other countries” were plotting to bring down his government.

“We must strongly and consistently oppose the unconscionable scenario of the ‘colored revolutions,’ which are written as a blueprint in the capitals of other countries,” Mr. Lukashenko said, alluding to the uprisings that led to pro-Western governments in Ukraine and Georgia.

The goal, he said at the open-air ceremony in Minsk, the Belarus capital, is to force nations into a “new world order,” which would strip them of their assets and self-determination.

“We understand that the goal of these attacks is to impose uncertainty and anxiety and to destroy public harmony,” said Mr. Lukashenko, according to an official transcript. In the end, he said, the aim is “to put us on our knees and to bring all the achievements of our independence down to zero. This is not going to happen!”

Mr. Lukashenko, who took power in 1994, has come under unprecedented pressure recently, as Belarus has struggled to cope with runaway inflation. The government has tried to blunt the impact of a 36 percent devaluation of the currency, placing price controls on food and other basic goods.

The authorities are engaged in the harshest crackdown of Mr. Lukashenko’s 17 years in power. In response, Internet social networks have been promoting a new form of nonviolent protest, encouraging people to clap their hands in unison rather than shout slogans or hold signs.

On Sunday, journalists in the crowd reported that dozens of people were detained, at times brutally, by plainclothes policemen who saw them begin to clap during Mr. Lukashenko’s speech. Those scattered acts of protest were followed later in the day by confrontations between protesters and police officers outside Minsk’s main train station. Police officers there tear-gassed the crowd after a small clapping protest began to spread, according to Russian and Western news services.

Mr. Lukashenko has long sought to sustain alliances with both Russia and Western partners, but this balancing game ended after last December’s presidential elections, when the authorities systematically arrested nearly all the opposition presidential candidates and imposed heavy sentences on some of them. Western allies have imposed sanctions in protest of the crackdown.

Russia also has been expressing its irritation with Mr. Lukashenko, giving positive coverage to the antigovernment protests in Minsk on Russian government-controlled news programs.


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