Of the seven, five were injured by police, including runner up Andrei Sannikov who has a broken leg and head injuries. Police beat another candidate, Vladimir Neklyayev, so badly that he was taken to a hospital unconscious.

President Lukashenko ridiculed his jailed rivals.

"They wanted to become presidents. What kind of president are you if you are whacked in the face and cry blue murder?" he asked. "Why are you howling? What kind of president are you? You should put up with it!"

With Mr. Lukashenko's image sinking to new lows in Europe, Natalia Koliada, director of the Belarus Free Theater, says that European democracy activists plan to demand the restoration of European sanctions against the political leadership in Belarus. Without sanctions, she says, Belarus's president will return to trading openness for European aid.

"This is the way Lukashenko works," Koliada said. "He puts people in jail and then he tells to European Union, 'You should give me credits, I will release them."

Koliada, who fled Belarus on Tuesday, predicts that the protests will continue. While jailed in Minsk with dozens of other demonstrators, Koliada says she encountered a new generation of democracy advocates.

"People will care to protest and it was absolutely obvious in Minsk now," said Koliada. "Ninety percent of those people with whom I stayed in jail, all of them were people who came to the square for the first time. And the main phrase was that, 'We are just fed up!'"