Belarus arrested activists and blocked social networking sites yesterday to thwart protests on its national day as President Alexander Lukashenko warned opponents against considering any uprising.

The opposition had hoped to drown out Mr Lukashenko’s speech in front of a military parade with ironic hand-clapping but failed to perform any significant protest during the keynote Independence Day address.

However they have defiantly called for a “silent” evening demonstration in Minsk to protest Mr Lukashenko’s authoritarian rule, even though past events have been broken up by the security forces.

Around 20 people were arrested ahead of Mr Lukashenko’s speech including Pavel Sverdlov, the correspondent for EU-funded and Poland-based Belarussian radio Evroradio, said Nastasya Loiko of the Vyasna (Spring) rights group.

Concerts took place on the main squares in several Belarussian cities in an apparent bid to keep them free of protesters while the opposition said some companies had made employees sign pledges not to take part in the demonstrations.

Meanwhile, opposition politician Stanislav Shushkevich, who led Belarus from independence in 1991 until he was ousted in 1994, was detained overnight by border police as he travelled on a train from the Lithuanian capital Vilnius.

Almost 4,000 goose-stepping soldiers and 160 pieces of hardware filed past Mr Lukashenko in a sometimes bizarre parade that combined military might with incongruous elements like the Belarus national break-dancing team.

But Mr Lukashenko, dressed in a military uniform and accompanied as usual by his young extra-marital son Kolya in similar attire, delivered an icily serious message to the opposition.

“Unscrupulous scenarios of colour revolutions, drawn up in the capitals of other countries, are being imposed on us,” he said, referring to successful popular uprisings in ex-Soviet states like Georgia and Ukraine.

“The aim of these attacks is to sow uncertainty and worry and destroy social harmony. They want to put us on our knees and reduce our independence to zero. This will not happen!”

The main page of internet-based opposition group “Revolution through the Social Network” on a Russian social networking site was blocked in what the opposition said was a clear bid by the authorities to thwart their protests.

“The authorities are making a titanic effort to break the wave of civil protests,” wrote opposition website Charter 97.

Mr Lukashenko launched a crackdown on the opposition, unprecedented even in the 17 years of his authoritarian rule, after mass protests on the evening of his landslide re-election victory in December.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.