Monday, February 28, 2022

Solidarity

 


More than 500 people have been detained in Belarus for protesting against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, according to the country’s most prominent human rights group.

The Viasna human rights center released the names of 530 people detained Sunday across Belarus, where demonstrations against the war spanned at least 12 cities.

In the capital of Minsk, demonstrators marched in different parts of the city carrying Ukrainian flags. A large pile of flowers kept growing at the building of Ukraine’s Embassy.

The authoritarian Belarusian government has supported Russia in the conflict.

 From Moscow to Siberia, Russian anti-war activists took to the streets again Sunday to protest Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, despite the arrests of hundreds of protesters each day by police. Demonstrators held pickets and marched in city centers, chanting “No to war!”

 In St. Petersburg, several hundred gathered in the city center

In addition to street protests, tens of thousands of people in recent days have endorsed open letters and signed petitions condemning the invasion. Celebrities and famous TV personalities spoke out against it, too. One online petition, launched hours after Putin announced the attack, has gathered over 930,000 signatures in four days, becoming one of the most widely supported petitions in Russia in recent years.

According to the OVD-Info rights group that tracks political arrests, police detained at least 2,710 Russians in 51 cities for anti-war demonstrations Sunday, bringing the total of those detained over four days to nearly 6,000.


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