Belarus Protest Moscow/Sputnik: More than 150 people were detained during Sunday unauthorized anti-government protests held across Belarus, the unregistered Viasna human rights center said.
According to the latest data on the Viasna website, 151 people were detained in various Belarusian cities on Sunday; most of the detentions occurred in the Belarusian capital, Minsk.
Earlier, the police department of the Minsk City Executive Committee said that law enforcement officers had detained around 100 people attending unauthorized anti-government demonstrations in the Belarusian capital.
On Sunday, Natallya Hanusevich, a spokeswoman for the Minsk police, confirmed to Sputnik that multiple people had been detained during the anti-government demonstrations, but did not specify the numbers.
Belarus has seen regular mass opposition protests following the presidential election on August 9 that saw President Alexander Lukashenko reelected for a sixth term. While electoral authorities maintain that Lukashenko collected over 80 percent of the vote, the opposition insists that his key contender, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, won the election.
Demonstrations organized on weekends have become a signature feature of the post-electoral protests in Belarus. Sunday rallies are traditionally the largest, held in Minsk and other cities and normally resulting in multiple arrests.
Over the past few weeks, the format of opposition protests in Minsk has changed — instead of calling one massive rally across the city center, protesters gather for smaller demonstrations scattered across the city's residential outskirts. Police and security forces with special equipment are usually deployed to these locations beforehand.
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