A man is arrested by at least two riot police on Saturday in Minsk. - Sergei Grits / AP / SIPA

  • On Saturday, residents of the Belarusian capital showed their support for the opposition presidential candidate.
  • 36 people were arrested, according to the NGO Viasna.
  • The image of a brutally arrested man has been hijacked.

A man on the ground, while an officer in civilian clothes hugs him by the throat. The image, brutal, has gone viral on social networks. However, the man down is not a Polish protester, contrary to what an account with more than 217,000 followers on Twitter suggests.

The man was demonstrating in Minsk, Belarus, before the presidential election, and not in Poland as the author of this tweet explains. - Twitter screenshot

While protests have taken place over the past few days in several cities in Poland, in support of LGBT people, this photo was taken in Belarus.

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The man was in Minsk, the country's capital, on Saturday. Motorists honked their horns to support Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the opposition candidate, who was standing against Alexander Lukashenko, in power for twenty-six years. Passers-by supported the demonstrators by shaping the “V” for victory with their fingers.

Two videos of the protester's arrest are circulating on social networks. He is seen being arrested by four men, two of whom bear the riot police inscription, and then taken away in a minibus. The intersection where he was arrested, in the city center, is recognizable on Google Maps.

Another video of detention in the very center of #Minsk.

BTW, safety and security are the main pitching points of Lukashenka and his enablers for the West. And that's how safety looks like under this regime in #Belarus
video via tgm МКБ pic.twitter.com/NmIgY6ZmJq

- Denis Kazakiewicz (@ Den_2042) August 8, 2020

The fate of the man is not known to this day. The human rights NGO Vasnia counted 36 arrests on Friday evening. Journalists from the Russian-speaking media Tut.by witnessed five arrests. Contacted by 20 Minutes about the fate of the demonstrator, the NGO was not able to follow up.

The crackdown continued on Sunday evening, after the ballot, as thousands of Belarusians took to the streets.

Alexander Lukashenko for his part was reelected for a sixth term with 80.23% of the vote, according to official results announced on Monday. Svetlana Tikhanovskaya rejected this count.

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