Photo Gallery Lukashenko Cracking Down on Weak Opposition
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko with his son Nikolai. leaves a booth after filling in his ballot at a polling station in the Belarusian capital, Minsk, Sunday, Dec. 19, 2010, during the presidential election. Lukashenko no longer leaves the house without Kolya, his favorite son, the product of an extramarital affair with a personal physician he got rid of long ago. The 6-year-old boy has accompanied him to government talks, state visits and an audience with the pope in Rome.
A wounded blast victim speaks on a cell phone at Oktyabrskaya subway station in Minsk, Belarus, on Monday, April 11, 2011. A total of 13 people were killed in the explosion, which Lukashenko has blamed on regime opponents funded by the West.
Police arrest an activist of the Belarus youth organization Mlady Front (Young Front) during their rally in Minsk on December 20, 2010. Lukashenko has directed all his scorn at the opposition since the election. After the autocrat supposedly won 79.7 percent of the vote, most of the opposition candidates joined tens of thousands of demonstrators outside the main government building to protest against suspected electoral fraud. Security forces brutally suppressed the demonstration, injuring at least 100 people and arresting some 700.
