Mass Protests in Belarus Following Disputed Election Results
CHURCH (voice-over): Tense moments between protesters and riot police in Minsk when clashes broke out across Belarus. Riot police cracked down on protesters demonstrating against the early results in the foremost Soviet country's presidential election. The Central Election Commission says six-term incumbent president, Alexander Lukashenko, has won by a landslide. The main opposition candidate and independent monitoring group's dispute those results. So, let's turn to CNN's Frederik Pleitgen. He is tracking the developments from Berlin. He joins us now live. It is good to see you, Fred. So, what is the latest on these results and the protests?</s>FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Rosemary. Well, so far, we are hearing the opposition still says that they dispute these results. They don't believe that Alexander Lukashenko really won and got 80 percent of the vote. In fact, they still belief that they are the ones who essentially won or they are the ones who won this election. In fact, in about 10 minutes, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who was the only woman who is running against Alexander Lukashenko and certainly his most potent opponent in basically any of the elections that he has faced so far in that country, says she is going to hold a press conference in about 10 minutes from now. We are going to wait and see what she has to say about all of this very, very soon. But you're absolutely right, after those first exit polls came in from that election yesterday and it was really running up to that in the -- while the voting was still going on as well, there were protests that took place in Minsk and in other cities as well, where you have riot police out, you also have the military out on the street there as well, and you did see a lot of violence in a lot of this town in Belarus. From everything that we have been able to discern, from walking (ph) those videos, from also hearing first-hand the counts, it seems as though the protests started very peacefully. People came out on the streets demanding change as they have been in the run-up to the election, as well. And security forces then started arresting people on the streets there. And that is when in many cases the situation got out of hand. Now, there is one independent monitoring group who came out and said 213 people had been arrested or detained. Obviously, there was a lot of tear gas being used. There were flash bangs being used, certainly something that we are not used to seeing from Belarus, which of course has been under the rule of Alexander Lukashenho for 26 years now. So, it will be very interesting to see how all of this evolves, whether or not the opposition is going to come out on the streets once again today. Again, they are disputing these results. They are saying that the election was fraudulent, that there was vote rigging.</s>PLEITGEN: It is something that had been said as the election was going on. And as you mentioned, there were no independent outside monitors that able to see what exactly was going on in those polling stations, as well, Rosemary.</s>CHURCH: And just very quickly, you said these protesters are calling for change. How likely is it they will see that?</s>PLEITGEN: It is really up in the air right now. You know, Belarus is one of those countries that had been very, very quiet for a very long time. It is certainly not one where we are used to seeing things like political unrest or used to even seeing much from the opposition either. So this is certainly something that is very, very different than usual. So whether or not this is a movement that lasts is something that we are going to have to wait and see. But if we look at the way that this movement evolved, Rosemary, it basically started with a lot of -- or several opposition candidates were arrested by the authorities, then essentially their wives took over the movement and became more popular than any opposition figure ever had been before. And these protests, these rallies that they held were something that in size and scope and in scale were unprecedented for Belarus and certainly something that seemed very alarming to the authorities. In the week in the run-up to the election, there were a lot of people who were detained, including the campaign manager for Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, and still they managed to get people out on the streets. They then essentially hijacked pro-government concerts and had people come out there. So it certainly does seem as though there is a fairly large grassroots movement in that country that does want change to happen there, Rosemary.</s>CHURCH: All right. We will be watching very closely. Fred Pleitgen is bringing us the very latest there from Berlin. Many thanks. And thank you for watching. I am Rosemary Church. I'll be back with another hour of news in just a moment. Do stay with us.