Opposition candidate Svetlana Tikhanovskaya fled Belarus as police cracked down on protesters across the country for the second night following Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko’s claim to landslide election victory in Sunday’s elections.
“I thought this campaign had hardened me a lot and given me enough strength to withstand anything. But probably I’m still that weak woman I was at the start,” she said in an emotional video posted on YouTube from Lithuania, where she had joined her children.
“God forbid you face the choice that I did, so people, take care of yourselves. No life is worth what’s happening now. Children are the most important thing in our lives,” Tikhanovskaya said.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Tikhanovskaya, who said alternative counts showed she won the vote, left Belarus after she filed an official challenge to the election results at the Central Election Commission on Monday.
Before leaving, she had been detained for as long as seven hours, Lithuanian Minister of Foreign Affairs Linas Linkevicius told LRT radio yesterday.
Her departure came during another night of violent clashes between protesters and riot police.
In Minsk, people blocked part of the streets with cars and cheered from the sidewalks.
One man died when an explosive detonated in his hand at a barricade at about 11pm, the Belarusian Ministry of Internal Affairs said.
Lukashenko has vowed to crush the demonstrations, which he said were instigated from abroad.
The Ministry of Internal Affairs yesterday said that it had detained more than 2,000 people during protests on Monday night and that 21 police and security service personnel had been injured, with five taken to hospital.
Opposition groups united behind Tikhanovskaya, a 37-year-old former teacher, when other challengers were either jailed or kept off the ballot, leading to unprecedented protests against Lukashenko’s rule even before the vote.
The stay-at-home mother, who ran after her husband, Sergei Tikhanovsky, a political blogger, was detained and barred from the race, has called the crackdown “unacceptable.”
Her election ally Maria Kalesnikava said the opposition was ready for long-term protest.
“Svetlana had no choice” but to leave the country with several of her staff detained, campaign ally Olga Kovalkova told the Tut.By online news channel.
Her departure is not likely to halt the campaign against Lukashenko, said Joerg Forbrig, director for Central and Eastern Europe at the Berlin-based German Marshall Fund of the United States.
“The government is hoping that by removing such a symbolic opposition figure from the country, this will take the pressure off,” he said. “But it won’t have an impact because the protests aren’t led or organized by her.”
The EU’s relationship with Belarus is under review following the contested election, the European Commission said yesterday, although it declined to comment on whether sanctions would be reimposed on the country.
“The whole range of issues related to the relations between the European Union and Belarus is currently under review due to the unfortunate events which were related to the presidential elections on Sunday,” a spokesman for the EU executive told a news conference.
It said domestic election observers had raised reasonable doubts about the election results.
It also called the brutal violence in Belarus unacceptable and urged the release of people detained for political reasons.
Additional reporting by Reuters
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