MOSCOW (Reuters) – A presidential contender who says he fled Belarus because he feared for freedom and custody of his children told Reuters that the country’s opposition is trusting a candidate he characterized as Joan of Arc in recent days.
Valery Tsepkalo, a Belarusian opposition figure who was banned from participating in the upcoming presidential elections, attends an interview with Reuters in Moscow, Russia, July 26, 2020. REUTERS / Evgenia Novozhenina
Valery Tsepkalo, who was banned this month from participating in the Aug. 9 election against veteran President Alexander Lukashenko, fled to Russia with his two young children, fearing they would be taken away, his campaign said on Friday.
Authorities disqualified Tsepkalo, 55, from the race after saying they suspected some of the signatures he had collected in support of him had been forged, a charge he denies.
His campaign said that officials from the Attorney General’s Office visited his children’s school to try to strip him and his wife of their parental rights. The Attorney General’s Office has denied trying to take her children.
Tsepkalo, who said he suspected he would face the same fate as two other opposition figures who were jailed, said he had no choice but to flee.
“If I am imprisoned, then I cannot speak openly about what is happening in Belarus,” the former diplomat told Reuters at a café in central Moscow. “Lukashenko’s idea was to divide us all and destroy us one by one and he really did it.”
Lukashenko has denied that opposition figures have been jailed for political reasons, saying that law enforcement policies were aimed at preventing chaos in the country.
Tsepkalo, a successful businessman, said he hoped the opposition had frustrated Lukashenko by uniting behind Svetlana Tikhanouskaya, the wife of an anti-government blogger who took her husband’s place in the election.
Tikhanouskaya has joined forces with Tsepkalo’s wife Veronika and a female member of the campaign team from another camp to try to unseat Lukashenko, who has dismissed the women as too frail to lead Belarus.
‘JOAN OF ARC’
“Lukashenko could not hope that we could organize a symbol behind a person who appears to be for Belarusian society, as the symbol of the French resistance movement Joan of Arc,” said Tsepkalo. She was referring to the fifteenth-century teenager who led the French to victory against the English army, which was besieging the city of Orleans.
Lukashenko, a 65-year-old former collective farm manager, has ruled for more than a quarter century. He says he has provided economic and political stability, with the state continuing to meet the needs of many people.
He accused opponents of conspiring to overthrow him by force and accused Russian and Polish forces of trying to interfere in the elections, something that Moscow and Warsaw deny.
Tsepkalo described how he had taken a 700km minibus trip to Moscow from the Belarusian capital Minsk, with his seven-year-old twins, with only a small suitcase and plastic bags filled with his belongings.
Lukashenko’s refusal to take measures to mitigate the COVID-19 crisis had galvanized opposition against him, he said.
The president has told people to drink vodka and drink saunas to keep the disease at bay.
Tsepkalo added that the public was also fed up with the economic stagnation.
Tsepkalo, a former ambassador to the United States, said he hoped to travel to Ukraine and Poland to try to shape public opinion about his country’s political problems.
When asked if he feared for his wife at home, Tsepkalo said he felt the Lukashenko government had not yet determined how to handle opposition female figures.
“I hope I can return as soon as possible because I love my country,” said Tsepkalo. “I would like to see my country as a good, democratic and prosperous state.”
Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber’s Report; Additional reports from Dmitry Madorsky and Evgenia Novozhenina; Editing by Andrew Osborn and Pravin Char
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