Exiled Belarus opposition leader demands news of her imprisoned husband

Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, centre, holds a portrait of her jailed husband Syarhey Tsikhanousky attending a protest demanding freedom for political prisoners in Belarus, in front of the Belarus Embassy, in Vilnius, Lithuania, Friday, March 8, 2024. The European Council on Foreign Relations indicates that there are currently over 1,400 political prisoners in Belarusian prisons. (AP Photo/Mindaugas Kulbis)

VILNIUS, Lithuania (AP) — Exiled Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya on Friday marched to the country’s embassy in Lithuania, holding a photo of her imprisoned husband and demanding information about him after a year of being incommunicado.

Siarhei Tsikhanouski is among several prominent imprisoned opposition figures whom relatives say have not been heard from in a year or more.

“For exactly a year, neither I nor my children know about the fate of Siarhei, who is being held in prison by the Belarusian authorities in complete isolation,” Tsikhanouskaya said.

She called on the United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to intervene with Belarus about the fate of political prisoners.

“The incommunicado regime is a way of torturing not only our heroes behind bars, but also their families,” she said.

Tsikhanouski has been behind bars since being arrested in 2020 after announcing plans to challenge authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko in that year’s election. Viktar Babaryka, another aspirant to run against Lukashenko, also was arrested that year and has not been heard from in about a year.

The head of Babaryka’s campaign headquarters, Maria Kolesnikova, was arrested amid huge protests that broke out following the announcement that Lukashenko had won the August 2020 election and also has not been able to communicate.

After Tsikhanouski was arrested, his wife ran in his stead as the main opposition candidate but was forced by authorities to leave the country the day after the election. She went to Lithuania along with many others fleeing Belarus’ repression of opposition and independent news media.

The wave of post-election protests was the largest and most sustained to challenge Lukashenko, who has led the country since 1994, and led to a wide crackdown in which more than 35,000 people were arrested.

The Belarusian human rights group Viasna counts more than 1,400 political prisoners in the country, including the group’s founder, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ales Bialiatski.