MASS PROCESSION IN MINSK ON INDEPENDENCE ANNIVERSARY.

More than 10,000 mostly young people marched yesterday in central Minsk to mark the 80th anniversary of the independent Belarus Republic. Yesterday’s demonstration, organized mainly by the Popular Front and the Young Front, featured speakers who decried the political support shown to "the current Belarusan president by the current Russian leaders." The organizers’ printed appeal, distributed in advance of the event, stated that "Belarus finds itself again on the brink of being transformed into a colony of the Russian empire. The more they ‘integrate’ us, the worse we live. We can be either an independent and free European state or a Russian imperial periphery." (Russian agencies, AP, March 22) Proclaimed by the Belarusan People’s Rada on 25 March 1918, the independent republic was suppressed shortly afterward by the Red Army.

Belarus Hit by a Currency Crisis…