Thousands of people came out onto the streets of Minsk, Belarus' capital, to protest following the swearing-in of Alexander Lukashenko as the country's president, in a secret ceremony yesterday. Riot police clashed with many protesters, using water cannon and stun grenades to control the crowds.
Lukashenko has now been in office for 26 years, and his political opposition and a huge number of their supporters continue to insist that the presidential elections of this past August were a farce and that the results, declaring Lukashenko the victor, were faked.