Belarusian opposition leader flees abroad with two children before elections

MINSK (Reuters) – An opposition candidate who wanted to confront Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko in next month’s presidential election fled to Russia with his two sons, fearing they might be removed, his campaign said on Friday.

Valery Tsepkalo, the country’s former ambassador to Washington and later the founder of an office park for technology companies, feared that authorities had begun a process to deprive him of his parental rights.

Lukashenko has jailed two of his main electoral rivals and has detained hundreds of protesters in a 26-year anti-dissent offensive against his government that has drawn Western criticism.

The Tsepkalo campaign said officials from the Attorney General’s Office had come to the children’s school asking for written statements that their family was not caring for the children well enough.

“We had no other choice,” Tsepkalo’s wife Veronika, who stayed to campaign against Lukashenko, told a crowd of hundreds of people at a demonstration.

“Concerned people called me and said: ‘We don’t want to sign these documents, but they force us (to sign), they pick up something bad against you and the next step is to deprive you of the rights of the parents, that you are a bad mother, don’t take care of the kids. ”

The Attorney General’s Office denied that authorities visited the school. “The prosecutor’s office did not take any steps to deprive Valery or Veronika Tsepkalo of the parents’ rights,” it said in a statement.

The Tsepkalos have not disclosed the age of the children.

Valery Tsepkalo’s move abroad comes days after another opposition candidate, Svetlana Tikhanouskaya, moved her two children to an undisclosed location in the European Union. She received anonymous threats that her children would be taken away.

Veronika Tsepkalo has joined forces with Tikhanouskaya and a third woman representing another candidate, now in prison, to jointly campaign against Lukashenko.

Valery Tsepkalo was banned from appearing after the central electoral commission canceled some of the signatures he needed to muster to become a candidate.

Tikhanouskaya launched her campaign after her husband, a popular blogger planning to run against the president, was arrested in May.

Protests in support of opposition candidates are the biggest challenge in years for Lukashenko, amid anger over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic and complaints about the economy and human rights.