Nobel laureate warns arrests won't stop Belarus protests

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Belarusian authorities on Wednesday detained one of the two last leading members of an opposition council who remained free, moving methodically to end a month of protests against authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko.

Lawyer Maxim Znak, a member of the Coordination Council created by the opposition to facilitate talks with the country's leader of 26 years on a transition of power, was taken out of the council's office by unidentified masked people, associate Gleb German said.

Znak only had time to text message “masks” before they took the phone away from him. German said.

Unidentified people also attempted Wednesday to enter the apartment of writer Svetlana Alexievich, the winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize in literature and now the only member of the council's executive presidium still free in Belarus.

Diplomats from several European Union nations and journalists converged on Alexievich's apartment in the Belarusian capital, Minsk, to try to prevent her detention.

The foreign ministers of the Nordic Baltic nations, meeting in Estonia on Wednesday, urged Belarusian authorities to end a police crackdown on post-election protests and the prosecution of activists.

Swedish Foreign Minister Ann Linde voiced deep concern over the crackdown on protesters and the detentions and forcible expulsions of opposition activists.

"We demand the immediate release of all those detained on political grounds before and after the falsified presidential election,” she said after the meeting.

Lithuanian Foreign Minister Linas Linkevicius said the members of the opposition council only want to allow the people of Belarus to “choose their future themselves. That’s the least they are asking, and the least they deserved.”

Last month, Nobel laureate...