2024-02-22 19:32:11
Belarusian opponent Svetlana Tikhanovskaya on Thursday urged democratic governments to consider the death of Alexeï Navalny as a “red line” which must not be crossed in the future and to truly hold those responsible to account.
“Navalny’s death might turn either into a green light for other murders, or into a red line”, depending on the attitude of Westerners, warned the leading figure of the Belarusian opposition in exile, ahead of an OSCE meeting in Vienna.
“If the powerful democratic world limits itself to expressing its empathy, then dictators will have more room to kill their dissidents with impunity,” she said in reaction to the death in prison on Friday of the main Russian opponent.
On the contrary, it should send a “strong signal” in terms of “sanctions” and create “mechanisms” to guarantee justice for victims, she said.
Svetlana Tikhanovskaya said she was “personally touched” by the announcement of the death of Alexeï Navalny, her husband also being held incommunicado. “Our lawyer is not allowed to visit him and I know nothing regarding his treatment, nor if he is tortured,” she denounced.
In exile in Lithuania since losing the Belarusian presidential election in 2020 to Alexander Lukashenko, Ms. Tikhanovskaya, 41, has always contested this result. Since then, repression has been in full swing in Belarus.
According to the NGO Viasna, this country led since 1994 by this ally of Vladimir Putin in the Russian invasion of Ukraine currently has more than 1,400 political prisoners and five people have died in detention since 2021.
The parliamentary elections scheduled for this weekend are the first since the 2020 protests and Ms Tikhanovskaya called the vote a “Soviet farce”, intended to “legitimize Mr Lukashenko”.
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