Belarus has announced on Thursday the arrest of some 700 protesters following the disputed presidential. Many opponents are forced to flee.
The repression was stepped up in Belarus. In the Face of this situation, many opponents have found refuge in neighbouring countries members of the EU, like the candidate unhappy with the presidential election of Sunday, Svetlana Tikhanovskaïa, who has been granted asylum in Lithuania.
This woman, 37-year-old left Tuesday Belarus for another former soviet republic that’s today part of Nato, saying in a video that you took “only” this “very difficult decision”, after the election that she was to have won against the outgoing head of State Alexander Lukashenko officially declared winner with a little over 80% of the vote.
“waves” of political refugees
“I know that much me to condemn it, many will understand me, much me hate”, she then added, referring to his two children, that she had already sent abroad out of fear of coercive measures. Lithuania, which shares a border of 680 kilometers with Belarus, has long been a home to opponents of belarusian and Russian.
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Its capital, Vilnius, is located just 170 kilometres from Minsk, is a destination “convenient” for critics of the regime of Alexander Lukashenko, who has been leading for over a quarter of a century with an iron hand his country, explains to the AFP Laurynas Jonavicius, an academic Lithuanian. And it is in this city that sit on the Home belarusian human rights, an NGO, and a university of belarus in exile funded by the european Union.
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“We help to disseminate information here, because in Belarus, the authorities control the Internet,” says AFP Sabina Alieva, a militant of the age of 18 years at the head of the students union of this university. Lithuania “is a destination very natural for Belarusians seeking a safe place outside of Belarus”, said, meanwhile, Vadzim Vileita, a journalist and political analyst for 37 years. “If people want to leave Belarus for political reasons, they usually go in Lithuania or in Poland”, he adds.
“After many elections, when there were repressions in Belarus, we have had waves of immigrants, policies arriving in Lithuania, each time, to avoid prosecution policies,” he said again. However, stresses Sabin Alieva, with the events organized in Belarus to protest against the re-election on Sunday, Alexander Lukashenko, many young people living in Lithuania are returning now in their countries to provide their support to the protesters.
hundreds Of arrests
On-site, the power does everything to stop them. Belarus announced on Thursday the arrest of some 700 protesters the previous day, the fourth day of a protest violently repressed, killing two people, The news was announced by the ministry in belarus of the Interior, on his account Telegram. In total, more than 6700 protesters have been arrested since Sunday evening.
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He estimated that the protests are fading, “but the level of aggressiveness with respect to the forces of law and order remains high,” noting that 103 police officers were injured, 28 of them are hospitalized. No detailed assessment has been published regarding the protesters, against whom, rubber bullets, batons, and grenades sound are used without restraint.
on Wednesday, the belarusian authorities have also confirmed the death of a person in custody, arrested during the protest, a death that adds to the one of a protester Monday. They have also acknowledged an incident in which live ammunition were fired Tuesday, wounding a person in Brest. Thursday morning, in several cities of the country and particularly in Minsk, dozens of people came out for the second consecutive day in a disorganized manner to form ephemeral human chains peaceful, flowers in hand, a form of protest that has been less violently repressed the protests at night.
A government-in-exile ?
Ukraine’s neighbor, for its part, called on its nationals to avoid travelling to Belarus, and demanded the release “immediate” two defenders of Ukrainian rights of the man incarcerated. Another baltic Country, Latvia, also the border of Belarus, has also offered to give asylum to political refugees. With Lithuania and Poland, she has also presented on Wednesday a plan of mediation after the post-election violence that occurred in Minsk and in other cities belarusians, while on Friday, the foreign ministers of the EU must discuss these events during a video conference.
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The mayor of Warsaw’s Rafal Trzaskowski for his part said that all the political refugees arriving in the Polish capital there would help, calling for “solidarity” hasvec them. Officially, Poland counts about 28 000 Belarusian on its territory, from approximately 20 000 in Lithuania.
For Viktoria Andrukovic, a Belarusian activist for democracy now living on the territory of lithuania, a kind of government in exile that would lead Svetlana Tikhanovskaïa, that she describes as “president legitimate”, could even see the light of day in the future. The minister of foreign Affairs of Lithuania Linas Linkevicius, who had himself announced the arrival in his country of Svetlana Tikhanovskaïa, has said on Wednesday that this last, who has “the moral”, would be “in the near future”.
