World news Agencies Reported about Events in Minsk

Celebration pf Freedom Day and reaction of the regime to peaceful protests are in the focus of attention of international news agencies.

Reports about the protest on March 25 and about the pitiless actions of state agencies that carried our preventive arrests before the holiday and used force against demonstrators on Freedom Day, appeared in foreign press as well, Radio Svaboda informs.

Internet-resources of foreign newspapers, in particular, International Herald Tribune, USA Today, Gazeta Wyborcza and others, report about the number of participants, manhandle and arrests as front page news. According to International Herald Tribune, police had been prepared for disbanding of the demonstration in Minsk. Preventive arrests of opposition activists, potential participants of the rally, took place. The newspaper quotes Interior Affairs Minister Navumau, who said the day before, the demonstration was unsanctioned, and that consequently appropriate measures would be used against its participants. And that what has happened.

The newspaper USA Today stresses that rallies on Freedom Day are called unsanctioned not for the first time, and force was used again. The newspaper reminds that because of persecution of opposition and independent media, the US and the EU called Lukashenka’s regime “the last dictatorship in Europe”.

In its turn Gazeta Wyborcza notes that the Belarusian opposition takes pride in declaration of Belarusian independence, those the independence period then was short. The newspaper reminds that the Belarusian National Republic was in the same way as the Lithuanian Republic. The Polish newspaper quotes the former Chairman of the Supreme Council of Belarus Stanislau Shushkevich, who stressed that March 25 is not just a symbolic date, as the BNR independence in 1918 was recognized by 12 countries of the world, more countries than had recognized the Soviet Union for the same period.

BBC, Associated Press, DPA, Reuters, Euronews, CNN, Russian TV channels and informational agencies, the TV company Aljazeera cover the events on March 25 in Minsk as well. In reports of BBC, among other things, it is noted that Dzmitry Paulichenka was in command of one of the special units during disbanding the rally. He is on the list of persons banned from entry to the EU states, the US and Canada because he is a suspect in being involved in abductions of opponents of the Belarusian regime.