No safe place hanging defection and hijacking prompt outcry against Belarus

By Latika BourkeUpdated August 4, 2021 â€" 4.45pmfirst published at 8.09am

London: The defection of an Olympic sprinter in Japan and the mysterious hanging of a prominent exile in the Ukraine have prompted warnings that there is no safe place for a Belarusian dissident

Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who fled to Lithuania after claiming victory in last year’s elections against Soviet-era President Alexander Lukashenko, said the shocking discovery of Vitaly Shishov’s body, which was found hanging from a tree in a park near his home in Kiev, was “devastating”.

Authorities are now investigating his death, including the scenario that it was a “murder disguised as suicide”.

“Belarusians cannot be safe, even abroad,” Tsikhanouskaya said on her Telegram channel, hours before raising his death with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson during talks at Number 10.

During their 25-minute discussion, she also raised the plight of other Belarusians who had been attacked by the regime on foreign soil, including this week’s high-profile defection of Olympic sprinter Krystsina Tsimanouskaya to Poland.

She was ordered home from Tokyo for criticising the son of authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko. She fled to the Polish Embassy instead.

Poland has granted her a humanitarian visa, and its Deputy Foreign Minister Marcin Przydac said she was “being taken care of by the Polish diplomatic service”.

The athlete’s scheduled flight to Warsaw from Tokyo was changed at the last minute, and she was expected to land instead in Vienna, Australia, at 10pm AEST. A member of the Belarusian community in touch with Tsimanouskaya said diplomats had changed her flight due to security concerns, Reuters reported.

Team officials “made it clear that, upon return home, I would definitely face some form of punishment,” the 24-year-old sprinter told The Associated Press in a video interview from Tokyo. “There were also thinly disguised hints that more would await me.”

The changing flights comes almost 10 weeks after dissident blogger Raman Pratasevich was arrested after his plane made a forced emergency landing in Minsk, in what Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary described as “a state-sponsored hijacking” by Belarus.

Shishov’s colleagues at the NGO Belarusian House Ukraine said he complained of being under surveillance since fleeing Belarus last year when he took part in anti-government protests.

Christo Grozev, a lead investigator at Bellingcat, said they had already had a reporter on the ground in Kiev gathering data to uncover the truth.

Chris Murphy, a US Senator, said the US should help Ukraine with the investigation.

“Lukashenka must pay a price for targeting his critics, particularly on other countries’ soil,” Murphy said.

“We have dedicated resources and have a reporter on the ground in Kiev gathering data as we speak,” he told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.

“If it turns out the Lukashenko government is responsible for murdering activist Vitaly Shishov in Ukraine, it will be another deadly example of a dictatorial government acting beyond its borders to silence dissent,” said Kenneth Roth, from Human Rights Watch.

Benjamin Haddad, director of the Atlantic Council’s Europe Centre said Lukashenko had been emboldened because EU reaction to the RyanAir hijacking was so mild.

“Lukashenko is applying Putin’s tactics: extraterritorial murder and kidnapping of opponents. Europe must step up its reaction,” he said.

“In cases like these, you need a brutal and disproportionate response. Something that upends the calculation of the regime.

“EU leaders should stop ‘speaking the language of power’ and really wield power.”

Hours after Shishov’s death was revealed, Boris Johnson hosted Belarus’ opposition leader at Number 10.

“We are very much on your side, very much supportive of what you are doing,” Johnson told Tsikhanouskaya.

“We are committed to supporting human rights and civil society in Belarus,” he said.

Tsikhanouskaya says she won last August’s elections in Belarus against Lukashenko who was proclaimed the victor in an outcome plagued with allegations of electoral fraud and one that is not recognised by major countries, including the UK.

The election sparked the largest anti-government protests in Belarus’ history which were met with repression by Lukashenko, who Britain and Canada sanctioned last year.

The EU and US joined the pair in announcing more sanctions this June after the Lukashenko regime unlawfully diverted a Ryanair flight in May to detain journalist Raman Pratasevich.

Tsikhanouskaya, last week, visited US President Joe Biden who said he was “honoured” to host the pro-democracy leader at the White House.

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Latika Bourke is a journalist for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, based in London.

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