400 Arrested at Opposition Rally

Baton-wielding police beat back thousands of protesters Saturday at an opposition rally, sending armored personnel carriers into downtown Minsk and detaining 400 people in one of the country’s harshest crackdowns on dissent in recent years.

Central Minsk was sealed off, and hundreds of police poured in to disperse the demonstrators. Officers began seizing protesters and journalists, beating many with batons. Some demonstrators hid in stores lining the chaotic street.

The rally was to commemorate the founding of the Belarussian Popular Republic on March 25, 1918, when German forces were ousted from Minsk in the waning days of World War I. The independent state was short-lived, and within a year much of Belarus was part of the Soviet Union.

Belarus’ hard-line government had said it would allow Saturday’s rally on the outskirts of Minsk, but several thousand demonstrators went instead to a central square in the capital.

Acting Russian President Vladimir V. Putin appealed to the Belarussian government to release television crews from Russia’s largest networks--ORT and RTR, the Itar-Tass news service reported. The crews were detained and beaten, and their cameras were destroyed or damaged.

An Associated Press reporter was among several journalists detained and later released.

Police surrounded the office of the country’s main opposition group, the Belarussian Popular Front, and detained 12 members of the group when they tried to leave the building, party leader Konstantin Khadyka said.

Belarussian President Alexander G. Lukashenko praised the police actions.

“Any disorder must be put to an end, and we are doing that,” Lukashenko said during a visit to the United Arab Emirates.