Belarusian opposition figurehead 'abducted' on Minsk street in broad daylight, police deny any knowledge

Jonny Tickle
RT
Tue, 08 Sep 2020 11:18 UTC

© Sputnik / Evgeny Odinokov

Member of the coordinating Council of the Belarusian opposition, ex-Director of the Kupala theater, ex-diplomat Pavel Latushko and coordinator of Viktor Babariko's staff Maria Kolesnikova at a press conference of the coordinating Council of the opposition in Minsk.

Maria Kolesnikova, one of Belarus's leading opposition figures, has apparently been kidnapped in Minsk. She is the only one of the troika of women who led the election campaign against President Lukashenko still in the country.

According to an eyewitness report, as related by Belarusian news portal Tut.by, Kolesnikova was abducted on Monday morning and placed in a minibus with the sign 'Communication' on its side. It is not yet known who took her, and attempts by her associates to contact her have so far proved futile.

"I turned around and saw that people in civilian clothes and masks were pushing Maria into a minibus," said the eyewitness, who gave her name simply as 'Anastasia'. "Her phone flew from her grasp, one of the people picked it up and jumped into the minibus, and it left."

Speaking to the Russian news agency RIA Novosti, the Minsk Police Department denied any knowledge of Kolesnikova's detention.

Kolesnikova entered the spotlight in July, when her boss, Viktor Babariko - initially considered the leading opposition challenger to Lukashenko - was arrested and prevented from running against Lukashenko. Kolesnikova worked as his campaign manager. Along with Svetlana Tikhanovskaya and Veronika Tsepkalo, whose husbands had also been barred from running, she led the charge to oust the Belarusian president. Tikhanovskaya and Tsepkalo have since left the country.

Following the allegedly rigged election, Kolesnikova joined the Belarusian Coordination Council, set up by former opposition candidate Tikhanovskaya to facilitate a peaceful transition of power. According to Maxim Znak, a member of the group, Kolesnikova is not the only Coordination Council-linked figure to have gone missing.

"I don't know where Maria [Kolesnikova] and [council spokesman] Anton [Rodnenkov] are, and I can't contact them. I also can't get in touch with [software engineering services company] EPAM Senior Vice President Maxim Bogretsov and Executive Secretary of the Council Ivan Kravtsov," he said, sparking worries that the council members may all have been targeted. Bogretsov later got in touch.

Belarusian President Lukashenko has previously been critical of the Coordination Council, calling its work "an attempt to seize power," and has threatened "measures" to "cool some hotheads."

Comment: Yahoo reports on a protest of '100,000 people' - according to some human rights organizations - demanding Belarus' leader, Lukashenko, resigns. It has been 5 weeks since the election:

Police violently cracked down on demonstrators in the first days of the protests, arresting some 7,000 people and beating hundreds. Although they have scaled back, detentions continue; Viasna reported scores of people were arrested in Minsk and in the city of Grodno on Sunday.

Police and army troops blocked off the center of Minsk on Sunday, but demonstrators marched to the outskirts of the Palace of Independence, the president's working residence 3 kilometers (2 miles) outside the city center. The palace grounds were blocked off by phalanxes of shield-bearing riot police and water cannon.

"This sea of ​​people cannot be stopped by military equipment, water cannons, propaganda and arrests. Most Belarusians want a peaceful change of power and we will not get tired of demanding this,"said Maria Kolesnikova, a leader of the Coordination Council set up by the opposition to try to arrange a dialogue with the 66-year-old Lukashenko about a transition of power.

She spoke with The Associated Press by telephone.

Lukashenko has rejected any discussion with the council and some of its top members have been jailed. One of them, Olga Kovalova, was expelled from the country over the weekend, driven to Poland by police.

Despite the stalemate between Lukashenko and the opposition, protesters say they are determined not to tire. Some of the placards they carried Sunday showed a lively sense of humor.

"Lukashenka, start building a house near Yanukovych,"read one, referring to former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych who fled to Russia in 2014 after months of anti-government protests.

"The collective farm went bankrupt,"said another, evoking Lukashenko's former position as a collective farm director and his retention of largely state-controlled Soviet-style economy for Belarus, an Eastern European nation of 9.5 million.

Authorities also have revoked the accreditation of many Belarusian journalists and deported some foreign journalists, including two Moscow-based Associated Press journalists. AP's Belarusian journalists were among those told their press credentials had been revoked.

RFE/RL reports:

Tsikhanouskaya, who fled into Lithuanian exile days after the vote, is reportedly scheduled to visit Warsaw this week to hold meetings with top Polish officials.

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell on September 6 repeated a call for "inclusive national dialogue," saying "impressive mass demonstrations" around Belarus show the "determination of Belarusian people to achieve their freedoms, rights & democracy" in the face of "arrests, intimidation & violence."

It's notable how quiet these meddling foreign actors were when France's Yellow Vests, easily surpassing the hundreds of thousands at its height, were protesting and suffering extreme brutality at the hands of Macron's regime.

One day later, Reuters quoted three unnamed EU diplomats as saying the bloc will seek to impose economic sanctions on 31 senior Belarusian officials, including Interior Minister Yury Karayeu, by the middle of this month.

Initial approval without specifying who would be targeted, was given in August.

"We initially agreed on 14 names but many states felt that was not sufficient. We have now reached consensus on another 17," one of the diplomatic sources told Reuters. "These are senior officials responsible for the election, for violence, and for the crackdown."

Independent Russian-language news portal Tut.by quoted an eyewitness as saying that Kalesnikava, a member of the opposition Coordinating Council's decision-making presidium, was abruptly taken into a minibus marked "Communication" early on September 7 and swept off toward an unknown destination.

"The Minsk police did not detain her," Interfax later quoted the police department of the Minsk City Executive as saying.

The Meduza news site reported that acquaintances had lost contact with the Coordinating Council's press secretary, Anton Randyonkau, and a staff member of a barred opposition presidential candidate's headquarters, Hleb Herman. They said both were incommunicado without explanation and there were concerns for their whereabouts.

The Interior Ministry's announcement on the number of detained represents a significantly higher figure than earlier estimates by rights campaigners and others monitoring the continuing crackdown.

They had cited around 180 detentions in Minsk and dozens more in Brest, Baranavichy, and the western city of Hrodna on September 6, the 29th straight day of anti-Lukashenka protests since a disputed August 9 presidential election.

Confrontations between police and demonstrators were also reported to the east in Mahilyou and in the southern city of Homel.

A small picket-style protest was already under way in Homel early on September 7.

Tsikhanouskaya, who ran for president after her husband was jailed following his announcement he would run, said on September 5 that her country is in "deep political crisis."

"Belarusians have changed. They have woken up," Tsikhanouskaya said from Vilnius, where she fled days after the vote.

Ahead of the September 6 protests, Lukashenka's security services warned of a crackdown against those who decided to participate in the unsanctioned demonstration in the capital.

But scenes from Minsk showed massive crowds and a long column of protesters on the avenue leading to the presidential palace, which was guarded by police in riot gear, and protected by metal fencing and water cannons.

Demonstrators were chanting, "Long live Belarus!" and, "Shame!" and carrying red-and-white flags and banners, a symbol of the opposition that has been banned by the authorities.

Police later dispersed protesters with the help of tear gas.

On September 5, two unsanctioned rallies organized separately by university students and women's groups took place in Minsk.

News agencies reported that dozens of students were dragged from the streets at those events and pushed into vans by masked security agents.

See also: 'An internal issue': Russia has shown 'much more restraint' in its response to events in Belarus than EU & US - Putin