Tsikhanouskaya’s associate and Coordination Council member Maryia Kalesnikava has been charged under Art. 361-3 of the Criminal Code, the Belarusian Investigative Committee reports.
Kalesnikava is accused of ‘calling for actions aimed at harming the national security with the use of mass media and the Internet’.
“She is in custody. The investigation is underway,” the committee representatives say.
On September 7, Maryia Kalesnikava was kidnapped near the National Art Museum in Minsk. Unidentified people drove her away in an unknown direction. As it turned ou later, the politician spent half a day in the Main Directorate for Combating Organised Crime and Corruption; then she was taken to the State Security Committee (KGB), where the chekists demanded she voluntarily depart from Belarus. According to her, several KGB officers voiced threats to take her life.
“They warned that if I did not voluntarily leave the territory of the Republic of Belarus, I would still be withdrawn – ‘alive or ‘in pieces’,” Maryia said.
On September 8, Coordination Council spokesman Anton Radnyankou and secretary Ivan Krautsou who were forced out of Belarus gave a press conference in Kyiv. They told how the KGB failed to push Kalesnikava out the country. In the neutral zone, she destroyed her passport, jumped out of the car and returned to the Belarusian border. She was taken to prison in Minsk; later, she was transferred to the detention centre in Zhodzina. Belarusian human rights defenders put her on the political prisoners’ list that includes 58 names.
Prominent Belarusian writer Svetlana Alexievich is the only one of the seven members of the board of the opposition Coordination Council (СС) who remains at large. The other representatives were jailed (Liliya Ulasava, Maryia Kalesnikava, Syarhei Dyleuski, Maksim Znak) or forced out of the country (Pavel Latushka, Volha Kavalkova).
As reported earlier, Lukashenka’s strongest rival Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya initiated the creation of the CC as part of taking urgent measures to restore law and order in Belarus as well as to ensure the transfer of power in the country; it comprises about 600 members. Belarus’ Prosecutor General initiated criminal proceedings over establishing the Council, naming it a ‘threat to national security’. The authorities believe the body aims at seizing power in Belarus.
