After police in Belarus violently dispersed protests against election results, arresting thousands, the country’s police minister apologized to ‘random’ people caught up in the violence, but not those he called rioters.
Opposition supporters took to the streets on Sunday, accusing the incumbent President Alexander Lukashenko of election fraud after he announced he had been reelected with 80 percent of the vote. Belarusian police responded with sweeping arrests, marred by scenes of apparent brutality.
“I offer apologies for the injuries of random people who got caught up in the dispersal,” Interior Minister Yuri Karayev said in a televised interview on Thursday. He noted that rioters have attacked law enforcement 11 times over the past three days.
“We don’t consider the current situation to be a revolution,” Karayev said. He also said he would prioritize the release of journalists that have been jailed in the roundups of demonstrators.
“The press is sacred, and should not be touched,” he added.
Natalya Kochanova, speaker of the upper house of the parliament, took a similar conciliatory tone. Noting that more than a thousand of those arrested have been released already, Kochanova called on the people to “stop the self-destruction.”
“We don't need a fight, we don't need a war. Minsk has always been peaceful and calm,” she told reporters.
At least two protesters have been killed and some 6,000 people arrested in the four days of the unrest. Lukashenko has accused foreign governments – specifically Poland, Czechia and the UK – of fomenting a “color revolution” in Belarus, which Prague and Warsaw have denied.
Some opposition activists have demanded regime change and appealed to the West for support, while opposition candidate Svetlana Tikhanovskaya fled to Lithuania after reports she was targeted by an assassination plot.
