The pressure from the Belarusian regime was becoming too strong, so Svetlana Tikhanovskaïa will continue her fight from abroad. The opponent, a presidential rival to the authoritarian leader Alexander Lukashenko, announced on Tuesday that she had left the country. It does so two days after elections deemed "neither free nor fair" by the European Union, which threatened Minsk with sanctions.
A "very difficult" decision
Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, 37, said she had taken this "very difficult decision" "alone" after a series of opposition demonstrations violently repressed by the police. “I know that many will condemn me, many will understand me, many will hate me,” she said. The opponent spoke of her two children, aged 5 and 10, whom she had already sent abroad fearing pressure. Lithuanian Foreign Minister Linas Linkevicius said she was "safe" with her children.
In the street the fight does not fall for all that. "The departure of Tikhanovskaya is not going to stop us," said Ian, a 28-year-old protester. On Tuesday, calls for a general strike were circulating on social networks. According to Belarusian opposition media, several local companies took part. On Tuesday evening, riot control forces were still deployed in large numbers in Minsk where hundreds of protesters took to the streets in dispersed order. Several photographers covering the new protests have had their USB drives confiscated and their cameras damaged by police. Inflexible, President Lukashenko has already described the demonstrators as "sheep" guided from abroad.
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- Repression
- Demonstration
- Police violence
- Lithuania
- Belarus
- World