Polish gov't and opposition jointly call on Belarus to release political prisoners

Lukashenko has faced more than two weeks of mass demonstrations against his 26-year-old rule since a presidential election, which official results say he won with 80 percent of the vote. He denies opposition allegations of electoral fraud and says the protests are funded from abroad.

"We jointly call for the release of all political prisoners, and we very strongly call for the release of the arrested members of the Coordination Council," Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said after a meeting of with Polish opposition politicians.

Senior figures in a Belarusian opposition Coordination Council, set up last week with the self-described aim of negotiating with the authorities, have been jailed.

Belarus's most celebrated writer called on Russia on Wednesday (August 26) to help persuade President Alexander Lukashenko to negotiate, as she arrived for questioning in a criminal case accusing an opposition body of an illegal attempt to seize power.

"Now Lukashenko speaks only to Putin. We need him to speak to the people," Svetlana Alexievich, winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize for Literature, told reporters outside the Investigative Committee, where she appeared for questioning.

"Maybe the world can help us, so that Lukashenko will negotiate with somebody," she said. "We need the world to help, and maybe Russia."

She emerged after a short time and said she had invoked her right not to testify against herself. She said there was no basis for the investigation, adding: "The more we stay together, the stronger we will be, and the greater chance we will have of making the authorities talk to us."

Alexievich is one of dozens of public figures who formed the opposition Coordination Council last week, with the stated aim of negotiating a peaceful transition of power after an election the opposition says was rigged.

Lukashenko called it an attempt to seize power illegally. Two of its leaders were jailed on Tuesday.

Rights groups said on Wednesday that Belarusian police had rounded up dozens of protesters heading home from peaceful demonstrations, after days in which the authorities exercised comparative restraint towards mass anti-government rallies.

Lukashenko has faced more than two weeks of mass demonstrations against his 26-year-old rule since the election, which official results say he won with 80 percent of the vote. He denies electoral fraud and says the protests are funded from abroad.

Although Lukashenko has called the protesters "rats" and said he has given the order to clear them from the streets, police had been comparatively restrained in recent days, apparently wary of a crackdown that would add to public anger.

In the early days of the protests, police beat demonstrators and many of those who were arrested emerged to say they had been abused in detention. In her comments before questioning, Alexeivich deplored that violence.

"For God's sake let there not be blood spilled," she said. "What we saw the first three days, when they turned people into meat, that is from last century."

Rights group Spring listed more than 30 people it said had been arrested on Tuesday. In one typical account, a man wearing a red-and-white opposition flag on his shoulder was walking with his wife and young son, when an unmarked car pulled up, the group said. Two men in plain clothes jumped out, pushed the woman and child away, shoved the man into the car and drove off.

The Interior Ministry said police had detained 51 people for administrative violations after unsanctioned rallies on Tuesday. It typically reports dozens of such arrests per day.

Belarus has the closest cultural, economic and political ties to Russia of any former Soviet state. Russia has signaled its support for Lukashenko, including sending journalists to staff state television after workers quit in protest against what they described as orders to broadcast propaganda.

But it remains to be seen how long the Kremlin will stick by Lukashenko if his authority continues to ebb away. He has long had a difficult personal relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin.