The Belarusian people oppose russian invasion of Ukraine that Minsk is helping to facilitate and believe their future is linked to the result of war, exiled opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya said Thursday.
Tsikhanouskaya insisted on the need distinguish between position of Belarusian autocratic leader Alexander Lukashenko and people he rules with an iron fist.
“These are two different problems,” she told Agence France-Presse (AFP). in a meeting in Geneva.
Belarusians, she said, are now not only forced to fight against their own diet, “but also for Ukrainians, because we understand that fate of Belarus depends on destiny of Ukraine.”
Lukashenko is supporting of Russian President Vladimir Putin invasion of Ukraine, allowing it to launch attacks from Belarusian territory.
But Tsikhanouskaya, who the West believes it was the true winner of the August 2020 presidential elections that kept Lukashenko in power for a sixth term insisted that “Belarusian people do not do support this war.”
‘Treaty like the aggressors
“Lukashenko led our country in this invasion of Ukraine because it pays back the Kremlin for the support He had in 2020,” she said.
But “all our people are fighting now on the side of Ukraine”, the exile 39-year- says an old rights activist, pointing how Exiled independent Belarusian media reported on the war and how volunteers helped Ukrainian refugees and sent equipment in the war-torn country.
Earlier, during a news conference organized by the association of United Nations correspondents in Geneva, ACANU, she stressed that the Belarusians “are afraid of possible war on the territory of Belarus.”
As it stands, she says, they’re paying a hefty price for Lukashenko’s position, as international the penalties bite.
“We are treated like abusers,” she says, even as they “fight against dictatorship.”
She insisted that instead of denying regular Belarusian visas, penalties should target more state enterprises and banks that fund the regime.
Cracked Minsk down hard on the mass protests that erupted over the 2020 elections, with at least 37,000 people detained in material of month, with many claim to have been abused and tortured in detention.
United Nations rights chief Michelle Bachelet said on Thursday that 1,085 people are currently in detention on politically motivated charges.
According to Bachelet’s report to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, more over 900 people have been arrested last months during the protests over the constitutional modification of the non-nuclear status of Belarus, imposed by Lukashenko, possible for Russia will station nuclear weapons in the country.
‘Tortured’
“Conditions of political prisoners in our country are much worse than the conditions of habitual criminals,” said Tsikhanouskaya, whose husband, leading opposition figure Sergei Tikhanovski is among those languishing in detention.
“People are constantly humiliated, physically and morally,” she told AFP. “They are deprived of medications, of medical care, private of hygienic supplies. They are being tortured.”
Tsikhanouskaya praised Bachelet’s report, pointing to the data collected which could then be used as “evidence of atrocities.”
She pointed out that the world must “not allow violations of human rights in our country to forget in this (terrible) situation of war in Ukraine.”
She warned that people living in Putin’s Russia was now facing a situation similar to that faced by Belarusians for the past year and one half.
“We faced huge crackdowns after fraudulent elections in 2020,” she said, adding that Lukashenko “used all the possible violence against people.”
“Now the situation in Russia hasair like the same.”
