On Monday, students of a number of Minsk-based universities joined a nationwide strike.
On October 13, Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya’s team published the text of People’s Ultimatum they were issuing to Alyaksandr Lukashenka and Belarusian officials. They strongly urged the regime to fulfil the following demands: Lukashenka’s announcing his resignation; putting an end to police violence in the streets; releasing all political prisoners. According to the opposition, if they have not been met at 23.59 on October 25 at the latest, the entire country ‘will take to the streets to peacefully deliver People’s Ultimatum; on October 26, all enterprises will start striking’.
Representatives of Minsk State Linguistic University, Belarusian National Technical University, Belarusian State University, Belarusian State Medical University, Belarusian State Pedadogical University and others expressed their protest by failing to attend the classes and taking to the streets.
Later, there have been reports about students’ unrest in other Belarusian regions, in particular, at Hrodna State University and Vitsebsk State Medical University.
At about 11 am, students began to march to the centre of Minsk: a column was moving from the side of from the Academy of Sciences; several hundred students gathered at TSUM (Central Department Store and then headed towards Victory Square. However, siloviki detained some participants on Independence Avenue:
Belarusian State Medical University
Belarusian National Technical University
Belarusian State University
Belarusian State University of Informatics and Radioelectronics
Belarusian State University of Culture and Arts