Svetlana Tsikhanovskaïa, the leader of the Belarusian opposition in exile, on October 7, 2022 in Paris. JULIEN DE ROSA v AFP
After brutally cracking down on opponents in Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko is attacking those who fled abroad after his fraudulent re-election as president in August 2020, which sparked an unprecedented protest movement. The absentee trial of her election rival Svetlana Tsikhanovskaïa will open in Minsk on Tuesday, January 17. The 40-year-old exiled opposition leader faces ten charges, including “conspiracy to seize power”. You face fifteen to twenty years in prison.
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“I don’t expect anything from this process because we know it will not be honest or fair,” she told World via video conference from her office in Vilnius, Lithuania. The justice system has become a war machine directed against anyone who denounces the dictator. Other opponents who fled abroad will be tried on the same day, including politician Pavel Latouchko.
Svetlana Tsikhanovskaya is one of the first to be tried in absentia. This practice has become possible since Mr. Lukashenko signed a corresponding law in July 2022. A second law, promulgated on January 5, 2023, allows for the deprivation of citizenship of Belarusians in exile who “participate in activities of an extremist nature or have harmed the interests of Belarus,” a crime also accused of the opposition leader will.
proliferation of stateless people
This legal strengthening is aimed specifically at the many Belarusians in exile. “Thousands of people will be illegally deprived of their citizenship,” expects Ms. Tsichanovskaïa, who says she does not have refugee status like most of these exiles. The countries that are welcoming us and the entire European Union must face up to this problem. In order to avoid the spread of stateless people, she proposes that the EU introduce a “passport for New Belarus” – to be understood democratically.
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However, the prospect of a free Belarus is further away than ever since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022. Belarusian territory has become the rear base of Russian troops and Alexander Lukashenko, Vladimir Putin’s vassal, to whom he owes his political survival. New challenges have arisen for the opposition: “We have gone from being the heroes of the nation to being a co-aggressor,” Svetlana Tsichanovskaïa regrets. Those who rose up against the Lukashenko regime are paying the price. They are now regularly mistaken for whoever they are fighting. “It took us so long to explain that the Belarusian regime and the people are two different things and to make sure that the visa ban is not aimed at Belarusians! »
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