Lukashenka regime threatened Tsikhanouskaya to jail her, take away kids, she reveals in interview
The New Yorker’s Dexter Filkins revealed details of the opposition leader Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya’s being forced out of the country in his recent piece The Accidental Revolutionary Leading Belarus’ Uprising. The politician told the journalist what a dilemma she had been thrown into.
The presidential election in Belarus was held on August, 9. The election officials claim that Alyaksandr Lukashenka gained 80.10% of votes, and only 10.12% of voters supported Tsikhanouskaya. Notably, according to the independent platform Holas (Voice), he got 34%, while Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya got 56%. Straight after the announcement of the official exit poll results, mass protests broke out in Minsk and other Belarusian cities, prompting a brutal response from OMON riot police and spetsnaz troops.
On 10 August 2020, Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya and lawyer Maksim Znak (he is now a political prisoner) came to the Central Election Commission (CEC) to file a complain over the rigged election and stolen votes. Security officers dressed in dark suits and armed with machine guns were standing at the smaller entrance to the House of Government. Two more were waiting inside; Andrey Paulyuchenka, head of Lukashenka’s operational and analytical centre, was one of them.
Maxim Znak was ordered to leave Tsikhanouskaya alone. She was taken to a dark room and the door was closed. “Your campaign is over,” Paulyuchenka told her.
According to the Belarusian opposition leader, she was put in a double bind: leave the country immediately or to go to jail and put her son and daughter under other people’s care.
“All I could think about was my children,” says Tsikhanouskaya. She agreed to leave. When Svyatlana was taken out of the Central Election Commission through a back entrance, she was going by Maksim Znak and told him: “I am sorry, Maks.”
The woman was driven home and told to pack her things. There Maryia Maroz, the head of Tsikhanouskaya’s election ofice, joinned her. Then the women were put in Maryia’s car, Paulyuchenka was accompanying them. Police cars escorted the car on its way to the Belarus-EU border. They arrived there at about 3 am.
Paulyuchenka came out and ordered the two women to pass the border checkpoint. Tsikhanouskaya feared that someone might start to shoot, but the car drove on.
A day later, the Lukashenka regime published a video of Tsikhanouskaya’s urging Belarusians to stop protesting; previously, the politician had been made to read the corresponding text in front of the camera in the CEC office.
Upon her arrival in Lithuania, Tsikhanouskaya was taken to an apartment in Vilnius. She recalls she had nothing on her but clothes and a small bag with a spare hearing aid for her son.
“People put their faith in me. I felt that I had betrayed them,” Svyatlana described her emotions in the wake of her forced departure.
Svyatlana’s husband, popular blogger and might-have-been presidential candidate Syarhei Tsikhanouski, was arrested in May 2020. Several criminal charges were brought against him; the man is facing a hefty sentence. A number of Tsikhanouskaya’s election agents and supporters were jailed under a far-fetched pretext as well.
belsat.eu
