Belarussian courts on today jailed more than 150 mostly young protesters detained when police broke up rallies against a presidential election the West believes was rigged.
The European Union urged the protesters' release while a diplomat from Poland, a neighbour with particularly difficult ties with the ex-Soviet state, was barred from entering Belarus.
State television accused the diplomat, Poland's consul in the western city of Grodno, of smuggling publications denigrating Belarus and meeting "radical" opposition figures.
Main opposition leader Alexander Milinkevich, defeated by President Alexander Lukashenko in the election, denounced the trials as a farce. He said his backers would campaign nationwide to win more public support and organise bigger protests.
Second opposition leader Alexander Kozulin, arrested at the weekend, could face six years in jail on hooliganism charges.
The opposition rallied up to 10,000 supporters for protests last week, demonstrations unmatched in recent years in a country where Lukashenko rules with a an authoritarian manner.
But the protests against his re-election with a landslide 83 percent came to an abrupt halt on Saturday when police broke up a march and detained dozens of demonstrators.
At the Leninsky District Court on Minsk's outskirts, a judge read out verdicts in a monotone, sentencing six young women to seven days in jail each in less than 30 minutes.
NO LAWYERS
No defence lawyers were present and the verdicts for taking part in an unauthorised rally were rubberstamped irrespective of whether the accused pleaded guilty or not.
"This is a sheer farce, this is not a real trial," said Milinkevich, whose son was given a 15-day sentence by another
court, according to a human rights group.
"The sentences must have been pre-written ... The judge was virtually ashamed to raise his eyes," he told Reuters.
Another court sentenced a former Polish ambassador to Belarus, Mariusz Maszkiewicz, to 15 days in jail, while Polish journalism trainee Weronika Samolinska was jailed for 10 days.
On Belarus' western border, Polish consul Ianusz Dabrowski was barred from entering the country when he refused to let officers search his car.
"As I understand it, what is happening is, of course, connected to the situation in Belarus," he told Reuters.
State television said Dabrowski had "smuggled into our country newspapers published in Poland and ... other publications with information of purely biased and flagrant character".
Yuri Senko, chief of Grodno customs, told the television the diplomat's refusal to submit to a search proved he was concealing banned things. He said the customs service had asked the foreign ministry to bar him the country altogether.
Kozulin was being held in a jail in Zhodino, 40 km (25 miles) northeast of Minsk, his lawyer Igor Rynkevich said. Authorities had previously declined to reveal his whereabouts.
"I have demonstrated that the authorities are afraid of the people," the lawyer quoted Kozulin as saying from jail.
A local human rights body, Vyasna, said over 150 protesters had been sentenced to up to 15 days on public order offences.
Police said they only used force after Saturday's rally turned violent. They have not revealed the number of detained but the opposition said around 100 protesters were being held.