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Police said Tuesday they found him hanged in a park in the Ukrainian capital. An investigation into the murder has been launched.
“Belarusian citizen Vitaly Shyshov, who disappeared yesterday in Kiev, was found hanged today in one of Kiev’s parks, not far from where he lived,” a police statement said.
V.Shyshov, the head of the organization “Belarusian House in Ukraine”, went to flee to Kiev on Monday morning and did not return, said the center for the protection of rights “Viasna”.
According to the center, friends of V. Shyshov said that the activist who had recently fled was followed by “strangers”.
Many Belarusians have fled the country, many to neighboring Ukraine, Poland and Lithuania, as authoritarian President Aliaksandr Lukashenko’s regime cracked down on any demonstrations of disobedience following a wave of mass protests sparked by his disputed re-election in August last year. . The Belarusian opposition and western countries consider the election rigged.
Lukashenko has ruled Belarus with an iron fist since 1994.
Shishov’s disappearance was reported after Belarusian Olympian Kryscina Cimanouskaya said she was forced to withdraw from the Tokyo Olympics and threatened with being sent home when the athlete criticized the Belarusian Athletics Federation on social media.
„Reuters“ / „Scanpix“ nuotr./Kryscina Cimanouskaja
The sprinter, who was granted a humanitarian visa by Poland on Monday, said he feared being trapped if he returned to his homeland, whose authorities were targeting opponents of the president, human rights activists and journalists.
Cimanouskaya’s husband, Arseny Zdanevich, told AFP that he had fled Belarus and hoped to meet his wife “in the near future”.
Last December, the International Olympic Committee excluded Lukashenko and his eldest son, Viktor, from the Olympics and other events in the organization for persecuting athletes for their political opinions.
In May, Lukashenko sparked international outrage and sent a fighter jet to take over the Ryanair airliner from Athens to Vilnius. Roman Protasevičius, a Belarusian opposition blogger, and his friend Sofia Sapega, a Russian citizen studying in Vilnius, were detained after the plane forcibly landed in Minsk.
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