Accounts of violent beatings of protesters and mass detentions mounted in Belarus on Thursday as the country’s president, Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, clung to power with brute force.
Protests have gripped Belarus ever since he claimed victory in a presidential election on Sunday that his opponents and international governments widely considered fraudulent.
Dozens of journalists were among the thousands detained; those who were released reported horrific conditions in overcrowded detention centers. The arrests and violence appeared geared at scaring people off the streets. But the protests continued in Minsk, the capital, and across the country.
On the ground: There was desperation and grief outside a pretrial detention center in Minsk. Hundreds of people gathered, as they had for much of the week, looking for loved ones. Those released from the jail said that they had not been fed. They were not allowed access to lawyers and at night, they heard the sounds of beatings.
Closer look: Who is Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, Belarus’s unlikely opposition leader? She spent her summers in rural Ireland, as a “Chernobyl child” sent to the country for respite. Her host family remembers her as a compassionate leader even back then.