MINSK (Reuters) – A detained Belarusian blogger who helped lead protests against President Alexander Lukashenko has been charged with disrupting public order and attacking a policeman and could be sentenced to three years in prison, state investigators said on Tuesday.
Sergei Tikhanouski, the organiser of numerous pickets against Lukashenko and author of the slogan “Stop Cockroach”, which compares the president to a cockroach character from a children’s fairytale book, was detained in May during a protest picket outside Minsk.
The state investigative committee said in a statement that it had formally charged Tikhanouski and seven other detained activists for organising actions that “grossly disrupted public order” and an attack on a police officer.
Lukashenko on Tuesday accused the opposition of trying to destabilise the situation, which he said could lead to a “massacre on a square.”
Lukashenko, a 65-year-old former Soviet collective farm boss, has tolerated little opposition since taking office in 1994 and hopes to extend his long rule in the Aug. 9 election.
Thousands of people across the former Soviet republic of 9.5 million have been lining up at election meetings to show support for others seeking to run against Lukashenko.
Public frustration with his handling of the coronavirus pandemic and grievances about the economy and human rights have reinvigorated opposition to his rule.
(Reporting by Andrei Makhovsky, writing by Pavel Polityuk; Editing by William Maclean)
