Opposition defiant as police end Belarus protests.

[peejay 327]

Opposition defiant as police end Belarus protests

By Andrei Makhovsky

MINSK (Reuters) - Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko's riot police on Friday broke up days of street protests over his re-election, but the opposition, undeterred, said it would go ahead with a weekend rally against him.

Police wearing riot helmets and carrying batons swooped in the early hours on around 200 demonstrators camped out in Minsk's October Square and drove them off in trucks.

They were taken to a detention center pending trial.

The demonstrators were pressing for a re-run of the March 19 poll which handed Lukashenko five more years in power in the ex-Soviet state that he rules with an iron grip. The opposition says the poll was blatantly rigged.

The United States and the European Union issued separate statements saying they planned to impose restrictions on Belarus, including a travel ban, in the wake of the election.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060324/ts_nm/belarus_dc_52

I guess I won't be seeing my mom's relatives anytime soon if I'm banned from going there. But then again my relatives have been repeatedly barred from visiting us the USA for many years by our own retarded laws anyway. Now I cannot even visit them as I have in the past.

According to Section 214 b, "…every alien shall be presumed to be an immigrant until he establishes to the satisfaction of the consular officer, at the time of application for admission, that he is entitled to a nonimmigrant status." In other words, the consular officer has to get enough evidence that the applicant has strong ties to the country of his residence and does not intend to immigrate to the United States.

I wonder how long this new Cold War will last? My grandparents left Byelorussia (Belarus) in 1910 and never saw or spoke to their parents, siblings, relatives, and friends again for the rest of their lives. Two world wars, the Iron Curtain of communism, and Cold War politics limited their contact to occassional censored letters. Very sad.

[Sinergy 3]

It is sad. I hope it ends soon, must be hard knowing you cant go over there when youd like to.

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

I guess I won't be seeing my mom's relatives anytime soon if I'm banned from going there. But then again my relatives have been repeatedly barred from visiting us the USA for many years by our own retarded laws anyway. Now I cannot even visit them as I have in the past.

I hear ya. I enjoy visiting my extended family in India very much and it would suck if the US banned me from going. They can't get tourist visas either, for many of the same reasons.

[almaty 19]

sad news...i think only Putin supports that chopf##k dictator there.

[peejay 327]

The United States and the European Union issued separate statements saying they planned to impose restrictions on Belarus, including a travel ban, in the wake of the election.

I was talking to one of my Belarusian buddies that immigrated here in 1997 and recently became a US citizen. He interpreted this statement as having a different meaning than my assumption that US citizens would be banned from travel to Belarus by our own American government. He believes that this "travel ban" only applies to Lukashenko and the officials in his government traveling to the USA or the EU. I hope that is the case and Americans can continue to visit relatives there because it is next to impossible to get US tourist visas for them to visit us here in America. But, then again, Lukashenko can just as easily ban us from visiting our relatives too by refusing to issue us tourist visas to see them in Belarus. It is a mess.

I had assumed the "travel ban" was similar to the ban on US citizens traveling to Cuba by long standing US policy. At one time there was a similar travel ban for US citizens to travel to Libya. I had a friend that was working in Libya in the 1980's and he was banned from returning to work in Libya. Shortly thereafter President Reagan launched airstrikes against Libya in retaliation for their terrorist activities.

We will see how this Cold War plays out between the West and Lukashenko.

[AnaAndDaniel 0]

yes, always a sad situation these are. and that "travel ban" is an ambigious statement. chopf##k journalists/editors...

Daniel

:energetic:

[Jasman0717 9]

sad news...i think only Putin supports that chopf##k dictator there.