Belarus police arrested dozens of regime opponents who tried to stage a banned vigil Monday on the anniversary of a brutal crackdown on protests against President Alexander Lukashenko's disputed re-election.

An AFP correspondent on Independence Square in central Minsk saw plainclothes security agents grab about 30 men and women who were holding portraits of political prisoners detained on election night one year ago.

Some screamed and kicked as police dragged them along the ground to security vans waiting on the edge of the square.

Witnesses reported similar scenes at other central locations as trucks packed with interior ministry troops sat parked along the city's main thoroughfares while plainclothes police patrolled the streets.

"You will burn in hell for this," one elderly women shouted at the police as they broke up a candlelight vigil at the Krasny (Red) Roman Catholic Church just off Independence Square. "What kind of children did we raise?"

The website of the Belarus Christian Democrat party separately said that police detained their leader and 2010 presidential candidate Vital Rymasheuski as he was leaving his apartment.

The Vyasna (Spring) rights organisation estimated that overall more than 60 protesters of all ages have been detained.

Nearly 50,000 people rallied in the bitter winter cold a year ago when Lukashenko was declared winner of a fraud-tainted ballot in which each of his nine rivals was awarded less than three percent of the vote.

The show of fury at his 17-year regime led to more than 700 arrests and the imprisonment of six candidates in a crackdown that shattered all Western efforts to repair relations with the isolated ex-Soviet state.

Former deputy foreign minister Andrei Sannikov and old Lukashenko foe Mikola Statkevich were jailed for five and six years respectively, while two other presidential hopefuls received extended suspended sentences.

"This past year taught the people not to expect any positive changes from the government," Sannikov's wife and prominent journalist Irina Khalip said in an interview on the eve of the anniversary.

"Our illusions of well-being were shattered. Our government is dead to us."

The mass arrests came less than a day after Washington and the European Union called on Lukashenko to release and exonerate the rights leaders languishing in jail.

"We reiterate our call for all political prisoners to be released and rehabilitated," US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said in a joint statement.

Analysts said that Lukashenko's growing reliance on the state security service still known as the KGB betrays a growing concern over his shrinking support.

A survey by the Lithuanian-registered IISEPS institute showed just 20.5 percent of respondents saying they would vote for the former collective farm boss today -- the lowest rating of his rule.

The vast scale of Lukashenko's security crackdown has even altered the way people talk -- names are rarely mentioned over the phone as a precaution -- and resulted in new waves of Western sanctions at a time of economic crisis.

"He is tightening the screws even further and popular protests will simply be inevitable within the next year or two," Rymasheuski told AFP this weekend.

There are grounds for genuine resentment in the nation of nearly 10 million.

Salaries imploded when the state -- burdened by Lukashenko's lavish election promises -- ran out of cash and eventually devalued the currency to less than half its original worth.

The country is now expecting up to $7 billion in economic relief through the end of 2012 from its neighbour and most important ally Russia. But even official statistics point to slowing economic growth.

"Russia gives him time, but only the tiniest bit of it. This money will be gone literally in a few months -- in a year at the most," Rymasheuski said.