(Reuters) – Belarus will conduct police drills this week ahead of the country’s January presidential election to ensure that “manifestations of extremism and terrorism” are prevented, the country’s interior ministry said on Tuesday.
Belarus will hold the presidential vote on Jan. 26 in which President Alexander Lukashenko, who has held the country in firm grip for the past 20 years, is not expected to lose.
“The goal (of the drills) … is to prevent manifestations of extremism and terrorism, the involvement of citizens in illegal actions, and the suppression of violations of public order,” the Belarusian interior ministry said in a statement on its Telegram messaging channel.
The training from Nov. 19-22 will be conducted in the capital of Minsk and in major regional towns and centres, the ministry said.
The 70-year-old Lukashenko, who calls himself the “last dictator in Europe” has been a staunch ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, which has now continued for 1,000 days.
Lukashenko’s re-election to a sixth term in 2020 sparked unprecedented protests after the opposition and the West accused him of rigging the vote to cheat his opponent, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, of victory.
The campaign to suppress protesters and opponents, backed by Putin, led to the imprisonment of several thousand people, some of whom have since been pardoned.
Human rights groups say some 1,400 political prisoners are still being held in Belarus. Among the best known are Nobel Peace Prize winner Ales Bialiatski, 2020 protest leader Maria Kalesnikava and Syarhey Tsikhanouski, husband of Sviatlana.
(Reporting by Lidia Kelly in Melbourne; Editing by Michael Perry)
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