Strike leader detained in Belarus as crackdown continues

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Belarus' authorities on Monday detained the organizer of a strike at a top industrial plant, part of a methodical effort to stifle weeks of protests demanding the resignation of the country's authoritarian leader of 26 years after an election the opposition denounced as being rigged.

President Alexander Lukashenko has dismissed the protesters as Western puppets and rejected the European Union's offers of mediation. After a ferocious crackdown on demonstrators in the first days after the Aug. 9 vote that caused international outrage, his government has avoided large-scale violence against demonstrators and sought to end the protests with threats and the selective jailing of activists.

Anatoly Bokun, who leads the strike committee at Belaruskali, a huge potash factory in Soligorsk, was detained by police Monday and is facing a 15-day jail sentence on charges of organizing an unsanctioned protest. The factory, which accounts for a fifth of the world’s potash fertilizer output, is the nation’s top cash earner.

The Belaruskaili strike committee spokesman, Gleb Sandras, said authorities had managed to halt a strike at the factory that began two weeks ago and all its potash mines are now working.

He said that agents of Belarus' State Security Committee, which still goes by the Soviet-era name KGB, had pressured workers to end the labor action.

“KGB agents have inundated the factory, tracking down the most active workers and using various means of pressure,” Sandras told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. “The authorities have powerful economic instruments. They are blackmailing workers with mass dismissals.”

Strikes at Belaruskali and many other leading industrial plants have cast an unprecedented challenge to Lukashenko, who...