Belarus Residents Held a Sunday Protest for the 18th Time in a Row

In Minsk alone, more than 300 people were detained during decentralized protests, according to official figures. Svetlana Tikhanovskaya spoke at the rally of Belarusians in Berlin. For the 18th Sunday in a row, Belarus held mass protests against falsification of the presidential election results and the violence of the security forces against peaceful protesters. On Sunday, December 13, in many cities of the country, actions were held under the general title "March of the People's Prosecution". As with the last few Sunday protests, they took place in a decentralized format. People did not walk in one large column, but gathered in their yards and went out in groups of several dozen to several hundred people to protest marches in their neighborhoods. More than 300 people got detained in Minsk More than 300 people got detained in Minsk for alleged violation of the rules for holding mass events and disobedience to the police, said Roman Lashkevich, an official representative of the Minsk city executive committee's police department. Among them there are media workers. According to the Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ), correspondent of the TV channel "Belsat" Stanislav Ivashkevich, journalist Gennady Veretinsky and editor-in-chief of the Belarusian portal Onliner Nikolai Gradyushko were detained. Meanwhile, the list of detainees on December 13, which is compiled by the human rights center "Vyasna", at 22.30 Moscow time includes 238 people, almost all of them were detained in Minsk. For the first time, they did not close metro stations and did not turn off the Internet For the first time, during the protests after the presidential elections, the mobile Internet was not turned off or the metro stations were closed. At the same time, Beltelecom subscribers had problems with access to the Telegram social network. Protests also took place in Grodno, Novogrudok, Zaslavl, Bobruisk, Brest, Mogilev and other cities. On the same day, rallies of solidarity with the protesting Belarusians were held abroad, in particular, in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, Kiev, Lvov, Warsaw, Cologne and Berlin. Tikhanovskaya spoke at a rally in Berlin The rally of the Belarusian diaspora in the German capital was attended by about 300 people, the leader of the Belarusian protests Svetlana Tikhanovskaya addressed them. “Every Belarusian, regardless of whether he is at home or abroad, is now a hero. Now it is very important to support each other and communicate with European politicians so that they help Belarusians,” she said at the rally. Tikhanovskaya also participated in the ecumenical service at the Berlin Cathedral in support of the Belarusian people, and met in Berlin with the writer Svetlana Aleksievich. They "discussed how to help people in Belarus. Aleksievich said that she was collecting materials for a possible book - the stories of the heroes of this revolution," according to Tikhanovskaya's Telegram channel. Coordination Council supported protesters In turn, the Coordination Council (CC), formed by the opposition to transfer power in the country, said that at the rallies on December 13, Belarusians "once again showed that they do not want to put up with violence." They "still insist on the return of legality to the country, holding fair and fair elections and a complete end to violence," the KS Telegram channel said. The security service agents have again demonstrated that "their actions have nothing to do with laws and law," the Constitutional Court stressed. Mass protests in Belarus began after the presidential elections on August 9, which were declared the winner of Alexander Lukashenko. The protesters accuse the authorities of fraud and demand new, fair elections and the release of Belarusian political prisoners, as well as an end to the arbitrariness of the security forces against the protesters. In recent weeks, protesters have changed tactics and, in order to reduce the number of detainees, stopped gathering in city centers, which are often blocked by law enforcement officials.