TALLINN, 4 Jul: Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya said Tuesday that she had received an anonymous message alleging that her imprisoned husband, also an opposition figure, died behind bars.
\nSiarhei Tsikhanouski, 44, a popular blogger and opposition activist, was arrested in 2020 after announcing plans to run against Belarus\u2019 authoritarian leader, Alexander Lukashenko, in presidential elections that year. His wife ran against Lukashenko in his stead after the arrest, rallying large crowds of people in her support across the country.
\nOfficial results of the election handed Lukashenko his sixth term in office but were denounced by the opposition and the West as fraudulent. Amid unprecedented protests that broke out in the aftermath of the vote, Tsikhanouskaya left the country under pressure from the authorities. Her husband was later sentenced to 19 1\/2 years in prison on charges of organizing mass riots.
\nTsikhanouskaya told The Associated Press on Tuesday that she hadn\u2019t received any news from her husband since early March \u2014 letters to him are no longer being delivered, and his lawyer hasn\u2019t been allowed to see him.
\n\u201cI don\u2019t know anything about him. I haven\u2019t received a single letter, and there\u2019s been no communication through his lawyer,\u201d Tsikhanouskaya told the AP in written comments. She added that at the same time she didn\u2019t have any proof the claim in the anonymous note was true, but demanded the authorities \u201cprovide proof that Siarhei is alive and show him.\u201d
\nTsikhanouski is not the only imprisoned opposition figure whose fate is shrouded in mystery. It\u2019s been 67 days since anyone heard anything from Viktar Babaryka, a former banker who also planned to run for president in 2020. His supporters worry that he was beaten up and put in a prison hospital. He was due to appear in court and testify in the trial of his son, which began on May 22, but missed the hearing.
\nIt\u2019s been over five months since any news emerged about Maria Kolesnikova, Babaryka\u2019s campaign manager, who was also arrested in 2020 and sentenced to 11 years in prison. According to a recent statement by Amnesty International, Kolesnikova hasn\u2019t been allowed to make phone calls, write letters or see her family or lawyers since mid-February.
\nAnother opposition figure, Nikolai Statkevich, is serving a 14-year-sentence and hasn\u2019t been heard from for 145 days.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s a new deliberate policy by the authorities to keep opposition leaders in full information isolation,\u201d Pavel Sapelko from Belarus\u2019 prominent rights group Viasna told the AP. \u201cIt\u2019s an attempt by the authorities to pressure not just political prisoners, who are being deprived of contact with the outside world and are held in horrible conditions, but their families, as well, who are forced to live without any information about their loved ones.\u201d
\nThe Belarusian authori-ties have not commented on the situation.
\nAccording to Viasna, a total of 1,501 political prisoners are currently behind bars in Belarus. (AP)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
TALLINN, 4 Jul: Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya said Tuesday that she had received an anonymous message alleging that her imprisoned husband, also an opposition figure, died behind bars. Siarhei Tsikhanouski, 44, a popular blogger and opposition activist, was arrested in 2020 after announcing plans to run against Belarus\u2019 authoritarian leader, Alexander Lukashenko, in presidential […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-219708","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219708"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219708\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}