(CN) — A wave of protests aimed at bringing down the 26-year dictatorial rule of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko is intensifying after jailed protesters accused the government of beating and torturing them in the chaotic days following last Sunday's disputed presidential election.
Pressure on Lukashenko to step down grew on Friday as large crowds demanding new elections took to the streets in the capital Minsk and other cities. In Minsk, women protesters, many dressed in white, waved white flags and carried flowers as they paraded by the former KGB building, an imposing structure where political prisoners are held to this day. Also, workers at factories and at the Minsk metro went on strike, according to news and social media reports.
The European Union, meanwhile, appeared ready to impose sanctions on the Belarus regime.
The leader of the opposition, Svetlana Tsikhanouskaya, issued a video from Lithuania, to which she fled for her safety, urging Belarusians to protest the election results. She declared herself the winner, saying she likely won between 60% and 70% of the vote. Official results said she got only about 10%.
Last Sunday, Belarusian election officials declared Lukashenko the victor with 80% of the vote. But the regime is accused of fixing the election results, as it allegedly has done ever since Lukashenko came to power in 1994 and consolidated the state around him. In the run-up to the ballot, two opposition figures were jailed and a third fled the country for fear of arrest. Belarus is often called Europe's last dictatorship.
In defiance of the Belarusian state, about 100 polling stations released results showing Tsikhanouskaya won by large margins in those districts.
Meanwhile, images of protesters revealing badly bruised and swollen backs and buttocks after being released from detention centers and their accounts of beatings and torture while in custody are providing the growing protests in Belarus with new fuel and are undermining the legitimacy of Lukashenko's regime. At least two deaths during the protests have been reported.
On Thursday evening, Amnesty International said there was “mounting evidence of a widespread campaign of torture” based on testimony provided by formerly detained protesters. Human rights groups in Belarus are reporting that jailed protesters were stripped naked, beaten and threatened with rape, Amnesty International said in a news release. One woman described seeing dozens of naked men forced to lie face down in the dirt while they were kicked and beaten with truncheons, the human rights group reported.
Protests erupted in the wake of Sunday's election and have continued all week. Police have used tear gas, water cannons, rubber bullets, truncheons and even live ammunition to squash the largely peaceful protests. Since the election, the regime has tried to shut off Belarus from the rest of the world by shutting down the internet and targeting journalists. Protesters have gotten around the internet lockdown through the use of Telegram, a Russian-developed cloud-based instant-messaging system.
About 6,700 people have been arrested and on Friday, in an act of reconciliation, the Belarusian state said it would release all protesters.
“For days the world has watched in horror as police in Belarus fire rubber bullets and tear gas into crowds of peaceful protesters,” said Marie Struthers, Amnesty International's director for Eastern Europe and Central Asia. “It is now becoming increasingly clear that the bloody scenes on the streets of Belarus are just the tip of the iceberg.”
The BBC said it spoke to one man who described how people were beaten “ferociously, with impunity, and they arrest anyone.” The man said he and other protesters were “were forced to stand in the yard all night. We could hear women being beaten.”
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