Category Archives: Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya

Belarusian president signs law granting him lifelong immunity from prosecution

Posted on by

Alexander Lukashenko’s law also bars exiled opposition leaders from standing in presidential elections

The Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko, has signed a new law granting him lifelong immunity from criminal prosecution and preventing opposition leaders living in exile from running in future presidential elections.

The law theoretically applies to any former president and members of his or her family. In reality, it is only relevant to the 69-year-old Lukashenko, who has ruled Belarus with an iron fist for almost 30 years.

Continue reading...

‘I’m insanely thankful to the president’: how a Belarus dissident became an apologist for the regime

Posted on by

Raman Pratasevich was dragged off a plane and imprisoned two years ago. Now he praises the regime he used to denounce

Two years ago, Raman Pratasevich, a young Belarusian dissident blogger, was white-knuckled, begging a Ryanair flight crew not to make an emergency landing at Minsk airport.

He said: “Don’t do this, they will kill me, I am a refugee,” according to a fellow passenger. The plane, escorted by a Belarusian Mig-29 fighter jet sent to force it down, landed anyway. Pratasevich was promptly arrested.

Continue reading...

Images of Lukashenko released after rumours over Belarusian leader’s health

Posted on by

Authorities posted photographs and video on Telegram channel after authoritarian ruler missed events

Belarusian authorities have released photographs and video of Alexander Lukashenko, attempting to put an end to a week of speculation about the authoritarian leader’s health.

The footage showed Lukashenko visiting an army control point, but the ruler’s heavily bandaged arm and hoarse, exhausted voice appeared to confirm rumours that he has been in poor health.

Continue reading...

Lukashenko says Belarusian troops may have helped refugees reach Europe

Posted on by

Leader acknowledges it was ‘absolutely possible’ his army had a part in creating migrant crisis at Polish border

The Belarusian leader, Alexander Lukashenko, has acknowledged that his troops probably helped Middle Eastern asylum seekers cross into Europe, in the clearest admission yet that he engineered the new migrant crisis on the border with the EU.

In an interview with the BBC at his presidential palace in Minsk, he said it was “absolutely possible” that his troops helped migrants across the frontier into Poland.

Continue reading...

Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya: ‘Belarusians weren’t ready for this level of cruelty’

Posted on by

Opposition leader speaks to the Guardian a year after anti-Lukashenko protests began, as crackdown continues

A year has passed since Belarusians took to the streets to challenge the authoritarian leader, Alexander Lukashenko, over stolen elections, marking the greatest crisis of his 27 years in power and the most harrowing year in the country’s modern history.

In an interview, the opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya issued a message of defiance tinged with pain as she detailed the toll that the last year has taken on the 35,000 jailed, hundreds tortured, and thousands more forced to flee the country or hide from Lukashenko’s crackdown.

Continue reading...