it looked like a hostage video. Reading from a piece of paper, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the opposition leader, told supporters in an immersed voice not to take part in mass protests in Belarus or “endanger their lives”.
Hours later, she was in Lithuania, implying that she had issued an ultimatum: “God forbid that you should ever make the choice I opposed.”
For Tikhanovskaya, a reluctant candidate in the by-elections in Belarus, the pressure is almost too much to mention: her husband, a popular YouTuber, has been in prison since May. Their children were sent abroad after receiving threats. And her close friend and campaign manager, Maria Moroz, was arrested on the eve of the election.
Focal critics of the government say they are sure she was ousted, pointing to a trend to put pressure on opposition politicians and their families who have been withdrawing for more than a decade.
“While traveling around Belarus, the very powerful KGB worked … and thought about how they could put pressure on them to manipulate, speculate, confuse, what points they could touch and how they could break, “said Franak Viačorka, a leading Belarusian journalist and digital media strategist working for the US Global Media Agency.
Arrested in 2010 after protests against the president, Alexander Lukashenko, Viačorka said police had confronted him with copies of his computer files and financial documents, telling him they were provided by his then-girlfriend.
In a famous case in 2010, the government signaled that it could take over custody of the three-year-old child of opposition candidate Andrei Sannikov after both he and his wife were imprisoned by the government.
“For many people who have been in politics for a long time, they are much better prepared,” said Viačorka, a filmmaker and former creative director for RFE / RL’s Belarus service. “But for the neophytes who run this campaign, this is all very new.”
It was the excitement over a new set of politicians that helped set this campaign apart, with a trio of female faces led by Tikhanovskaya pursuing a different kind of policy than that under Lukashenko’s 26 years of rule.
But the election results, the severely injured crackdown and the use of pressure points have all looked familiar. Hundreds of family members gathered Wednesday at the city hunt to plead for information about relatives who have been missing since Sunday. More than 6,000 have been officially detained, and opposition members say the number is much higher.
Veronika Tsepkalo, an ally of Tikhanovskaya’s, said in an interview on Tuesday that both she and her husband had fled the country after warning that they could be detained. “Public figures from our campaign are hidden. “They are all worried about being arrested,” she said.
In a video posted that evening, she accused the government of family members of blackmail in an attempt to shut her down.
“I know what kind of dirty and disgusting methods the authorities are using to put pressure on us,” she said. “They use children, men, relatives and those close to us to distance themselves or discredit us in the eyes of the public.”
The pressure on Tikhanovskaya is likely to continue. Maria Kolesnikova, the only member of the trio of women politicians staying in Belarus, said on Wednesday night that she had not yet been in contact with Tikhanovskaya, more than a day after the opposition candidate revealed she was leaving the country.
“If all those around you and your family are hostages, it’s very difficult not to make statements under pressure,” Kolesnikova said on Tuesday.
In her public statements, Tikhanovskaya only referred to the ultimatum she faced. She said in a video that “children are the only thing that matters”, but was also told that they left the country in exchange for Moroz’s release.
An aid worker, Olga Kovalkova, said: “Svetlana had no choice. The most important thing is that she is free and alive. She left with Maria Moroz. But part of her team remains a hostage. ”
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