MINSK, Belarus: Belarus’ Nobel Prize-winning author was summoned for questioning Wednesday and police detained dozens of demonstrators in a continuing crackdown on protests challenging the re-election of the country’s authoritarian ruler.
Svetlana Alexievich, who won the 2015 Nobel Prize in literature, is a member of an opposition council created to facilitate talks on a transition of power after President Alexander Lukashenko won a sixth term in the Aug. 9 vote his opponents say was rigged.
Prosecutors have opened a criminal probe against the council members, accusing them of undermining the countrys security.
Alexievich insisted that she and other council members have done nothing wrong.
Our goal is to unite society and help overcome a political crisis, she told reporters. We must win with our spirit and the strength of our beliefs.
On Tuesday, two other council members were handed 10-day jail terms for organizing unsanctioned protests and several others were called for questioning.
The United States and the European Union have criticized the Belarusian vote as neither free nor fair, and urged Lukashenko’s government to engage in a dialogue with the opposition.
After a sweeping crackdown in the first days after the vote that caused public outrage and swelled the protesters ranks, Lukashenko has switched tactics and sought to quell the unrest gradually, with vague promises of reforms mixed with threats, court summonses and selective arrests.
In the first four days of post-election protests, police brutally cracked down on peaceful demonstrators with rubber bullets, stun grenades and beatings. Nearly 7,000 were detained, hundreds were injured and at least three people died.
Facing public outrage, police stood back for the next 12 days but again started detaining protesters this week. The Interior Ministry said 51 demonstrators were detained in Minsk and other cities on Tuesday.
Lukashenko, who has ruled the country with an iron fist since 1994, bristled at demands to step down and said he would not give in to pressure. In a show of defiance on Sunday, the 65-year-old embattled leader toted an assault rifle as he arrived at his residence by helicopter, while protesters rallied nearby.
A wave of strikes at industrial plants across the country has posed an unprecedented challenge to Lukashenko who had relied on blue-collar workers as his core support base in the past.
The authorities have tried to end the strikes by pressuring workers and detaining the organizers.
Alexander Lavrinovich, the head of the strike organizing committee at the Minsk Tractor Plant, was handed a 10-day jail sentence Wednesday on charges of organizing an unsanctioned protest.
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Associated Press writers Daria Litvinova and Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow contributed.
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