MINSK, Belarus — Phalanxes of Belarusian police in full riot gear violently dispersed thousands of demonstrators who poured into the streets to challenge the early count from Sunday’s presidential election, which indicated the longtime authoritarian leader won a sixth term by a landslide.
Hundreds of people were detained, according to a leading rights group.
The crackdown that began late Sunday and lasted through the night followed a tense campaign that saw large rallies against President Alexander Lukashenko, who has ruled the former Soviet nation with an iron hand for 26 years.
Election officials declared that early returns show the 65-year-old Lukashenko winning with more than 80% of the vote while the main challenger, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, a former English teacher and political novice, had about 8%.
Tsikhanouskaya rejected the official claims, saying, “I will believe my own eyes — the majority was for us.”
Thousands of her supporters quickly took to the streets of the capital to protest what they saw as official manipulations of the vote. They faced rows of riot police in black uniforms who moved quickly to disperse the demonstrators, firing flash-bang grenades and beating them with truncheons.
After breaking up the big crowds, police chased smaller groups of protesters across downtown Minsk for the next several hours.
Several other cities across the country saw similar crackdowns on protesters.
Interior Ministry spokeswoman Olga Chemodanova said police efforts to restore order were continuing overnight, but she wouldn’t say how many people were detained.
Ales Bilyatsky of the Viasna human-rights group told The Associated Press that several hundred people were detained and hundreds were injured in the police crackdown.
“What has happened is awful,” Tsikhanouskaya told reporters Sunday.
An AP journalist was beaten by police and treated at a hospital.
At Minsk’s Hospital No. 10, an AP reporter saw a dozen ambulances delivering protesters with fragmentation wounds, cuts from stun grenades and other injuries.
“It was a peaceful protest; we weren’t using force,” said a 23-year-old protester, Pavel Konoplyanik, who was accompanying a friend who had a plastic grenade fragment stuck in his neck. “No one will believe in the official results of the vote. They have stolen our victory.”
Konoplyanik, whose legs were cut by fragments of police grenades, said he doesn’t want to leave the country but fears he might have no other choice.
Two prominent opposition challengers were denied places on the ballot, but Tsikhanouskaya, the wife of a jailed opposition blogger, managed to unite opposition groups and draw tens of thousands to her campaign rallies, tapping growing anger over a stagnant economy and fatigue with Lukashenko’s autocratic rule.
Lukashenko was defiant as he voted earlier in the day, warning that the opposition will meet a tough response.
“If you provoke, you will get the same answer,” he said. “Do you want to try to overthrow the government, break something, wound, offend, and expect me or someone to kneel in front of you and kiss them and the sand onto which you wandered? This will not happen.”
Information for this article was contributed by Jim Heintz and Vladimir Isachenkov of The Associated Press.
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Voting under way in Belarus as protests rattle Lukashenko
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