Police in Belarus have detained a group of opposition leaders at anti-government protests that have rocked the country after an outcry over a "tax on freeloaders", a prominent local human group rights said.
Discontent over the controversial tax - which obliges those who work less than six months a year to pay about $200 (185 euros) - snowballed after President Alexander Lukashenko this week froze the measure for 2017, while insisting it would not be cancelled. The Vyasna human rights group said that opposition leader Pavel Severinets, as well as three journalists, were arrested during a Sunday protest in the city of Orsha in eastern Belarus. Protests also erupted Sunday in Babruysk city and the town of Rahachow, which are both in the east of the ex-Soviet country.
Three other opposition leaders were arrested Saturday and thrown in detention for 15 days following a rally that saw some 1,000 people take to the streets in the city of Maladzyechna, north-west of the capital Minsk, Vyasna said.
The group said that at least 10 people had been put under administrative detention and that many other rally participants had been fined.
Lukashenko's suspension of the tax, which observers interpreted as a concession to protesters, came after thousands took to the streets last month in the largest such rally since 2010.
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