MINSK (Reuters) – Belarusian opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanouskaya said Tuesday that she had fled for the sake of her children after the victory of leader Alexander Lukashenko in Sunday’s presidential election provoked bloody street protests.
Tikhanouskaya, a 37-year-old former English instructor who replaced her husband in the election after his incarceration, fled to neighboring Lithuania. She suggested to her countrymen that they do not oppose the police and put their lives at risk.
But the riots broke out for the third night in a row on Tuesday when security forces fired rubber bullets and paralyzing grenades to disperse thousands of protesters who took to the streets accusing Lukashenko, in force since 1994, to defraud the vote.
A Reuters witness saw security forces arrest dozens of other people and beat protesters in the street. Another saw the security forces break the windows of the cars and pull other people out of cars to attack them. A third saw at least two press photographers attacked and their cameras damaged.
The horns of the cars sounded in solidarity with the opposition, and others marched, clapped and shouted “go away.”
In the past, the European Union accused Lukashenko’s government of “disproportionate and unacceptable violence” and said it was reviewing relations with Minsk.
Although Tikhanouskaya’s husband, Syarhei, an anti-government blogger, is still in criminal situation in Belarus, she has met her children in Lithuania. He had moved them before after receiving anonymous threats about their security.
“You know, I think this total crusade had hardened me and given me so much strength that I could take care of everything,” he said in a moving video.
“But, probably, I’m still the weak woman I was in the first place. I took a very complicated resolution for myself,” he said, adding that political turmoil in Belarus doesn’t value anyone’s death.
“Children are the important thing in life,” Tikhanouskaya said.
Flowers
The atmosphere on the streets of Minsk calmed down on Tuesday, but a Reuters reporter saw the police from the open-air insurrection in several factories in Minsk as anti-Lukashenko social media called for a general strike.
People laid flowers at the site of central Minsk, where a protester was killed in Monday’s clashes.
Lukashenko compared protesters with gangs of criminals and damaging revolutionaries with hard-to-understand foreign sponsors. State media showed young people arrested with their hands behind their backs on Tuesday, calling them “Russian provocateurs.”
Belarus has strained relations with Moscow, President Vladimir Putin used a congratulatory telegram to pressure Lukashenko to settle for closer ties. Lukashenko has long accused Russia of wanting to engulf his country of 9.5 million inhabitants.
Lithuanian Foreign Minister Linas Linkevicius said Tikhanouskaya had been in a situation.
“She faced some tension and still had no option to leave the country,” she said at a press conference.
The Belarusian government said she was not forced to leave, but a separate video appearance, filmed on the Central Electoral Commission before she left Belarus, raised doubts about her departure.
In that document, he realized that he was reading a paper in serious official language, changed his previous position, and asked supporters to settle for the outcome of the election and avoid protesting to avoid bloodshed.
It was not known whether the video was made under duress or as part of an agreement that would allow him to leave the country.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said elections in Belarus “were neither free nor fair” and condemned “the continued violence of protesters and the detention of opposition supporters.”
The European Union said its with Belarus was under review, but declined to comment on whether sanctions were imposed on the country again.
Foreign observers have ruled that elections have been free and fair in Belarus since 1995, and this month’s pre-vote era saw the government imprison Lukashenko’s rivals and open criminal investigations into others who expressed their opposition.
Tikhanouskaya’s electoral rallies have attracted some of the crowds since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.
(Additional report through Alexander Marrow in Moscow and Andrius Sytas; written through Matthias Williams/ Andrew Osborn; edited through Gareth Jones, Grant McCool and Richard Pullin)
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