In Belarus, one-armed man arrested for clapping

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http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2011/0708/In-Belarus-one-armed-man-arrested-for-clapping

Moscow

The sound of one hand clapping may be one of those proverbial mysteries, but a man was arrested and seriously punished in Minsk this week for allegedly doing it.

It's a little whiff of absurdity amid a wave of unrelentingly grim news from Belarus, where "Europe's last dictator" Alexander Lukashenko is digging in against growing public protests over a collapsing economy that's gutted living standards and left hundreds of thousands out of work since January in the little post-Soviet country of 10 million.

In order to evade tough regulations on public rallies, protesters eschew placards and shouted slogans, and merely clap their hands to display their anger at Mr. Lukashenko's policies. Since the weekly flash mob protests began last month, more than 1,700 people have been arrested – 400 this week alone. Most of them were fined heavily or jailed for up to 15 days on police court testimony that they were expressing a political opinion by clapping their hands in public.