Moscow (AFP)
Belarusian athlete Krystsina Tsimanouskaya said she was "safe" Sunday night after claiming to be forced to withdraw from the Tokyo Olympics and threatened with forced departure from Japan for criticizing her federation on social media .
This incident comes as the regime of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko relentlessly pursues a crackdown on opponents, journalists and activists, with the hope of definitively putting down the historic protest movement of 2020 against his re-election to a fifth term.
"I am safe and the decision is being made on where I am going to spend the night," the athlete said in a statement posted on Telegram shortly after 5:00 pm by the Belarusian Sports Solidarity Foundation.
“The IOC (International Olympic Committee) and Tokyo-2020 spoke directly to Krystsina Tsymanouskaya this evening. She is with the authorities at Haneda Airport and accompanied by a member of the Tokyo-2020 team. said she felt safe, "the IOC confirmed on Twitter, which the athlete urged to intervene in a video on Instagram.
A little earlier an IOC spokesperson had told AFP that the body had "asked for explanations from the Belarusian NOC (National Olympic Committee)".
- Possible asylum request -
Krystsina Tsimanouskaya, 24, said during the day that she was forced to suspend her participation in the Tokyo Olympics by the coach of the Belarusian team Yuri Mosesevich, before being accompanied to the airport by officials of the National Olympic Committee Belarusian to return to his country.
"I was told that I had to leave so that everyone was calm and continued to compete" for Belarus, she told online media by.tribuna.com on Sunday.
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The Belarusian Sports Solidarity Foundation, which revealed the case on Sunday, said for its part to have asked the Japanese police to prevent this departure.
She added that Krystsina Tsimanouskaya was considering applying for political asylum at the Austrian Embassy in Tokyo.
For his part, a spokesman for the Austrian Foreign Ministry told AFP that "so far no contact has been established between the athlete mentioned and the Austrian Embassy in Tokyo".
According to the Belarusian Olympic Committee headed by Viktor Loukachenko, son of President Alexander Loukachenko, the sportswoman had to suspend her participation in the Olympics on "the doctors' decision, because of her emotional and psychological state".
A statement immediately qualified as a "lie" by the athlete in front of the press at the airport.
- Fear of prison -
Krystsina Tsimanouskaya fiercely criticized the Belarusian Athletics Federation this week, claiming that she was forced to compete in the 4x400m relay when she was initially supposed to run the 100m and 200m because two other athletes failed to compete. carried out a sufficient number of doping controls, she said.
"Why do we have to pay for your mistakes? (...) It's arbitrary," she protested in a post on Instagram.
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"I would never have reacted so harshly, if I had been told in advance, explained the whole situation and asked if I was able to run a 400 meters. But we decided to do everything behind my back. "she wrote in a separate post.
"I'm afraid that I could be put in prison" in Belarus, she told online media by.tribuna.com.
The 2020 protest movement in Belarus, which for months brought together tens of thousands of demonstrators, including famous sportsmen, had been put down by mass arrests, sometimes torture, and forced exile for its leaders .
In May, Belarusian authorities arrested exiled opposition journalist Roman Protassevich after hijacking the airliner he was on, sparking international outcry.
© 2021 AFP