Police Beat, Arrest Demonstrators

Police beat demonstrators protesting hard-line President Alexander Lukashenko as they cleared an unauthorized rally in the capital, Minsk. When about 1,000 activists began to march out of Independence Square, police arrested dozens of people, including several journalists. Earlier, police raided the headquarters of the nationalist Popular Front--which opposes Lukashenko’s policy of forming some kind of union with neighboring Russia--and detained Yuri Khodyko, who has helped organize street rallies. Nationalist passions were bound to be inflamed by an Interfax news agency report quoting Russian President Boris Yeltsin as saying closer ties with Minsk may lead to a full merger.