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Lithuania promptly rejected Belarus’ extradition request on behalf of opponent Svetlana Tihanovskaia. Lithuanian officials responded curtly and curtly to the Minsk judicial authorities: “We will see that hell freezes over before we think about this request.”
“We convey to the Belarusian regime that we will see hell freeze over before we think about their demands,” said Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis. “Lithuania was and is a wall behind which all democratic forces persecuted by regimes can seek refuge,” he added, according to Agerpres.
The Belarusian Prosecutor General’s Office has previously requested the extradition of Alexander Lukashenko’s former opponent in the Belarusian elections.
Svetlana Tihanovskaya’s husband, blogger and activist Sergei Tihanovsky, was jailed before the elections to prevent her from running. This is how his wife, Svetlana Tihanovskaia, came to run in the presidential elections.
Belarus has gone through a domestic political crisis since the August 9 presidential election in which Alexander Lukashenko was declared the winner with 80.1% of the vote.
The election of Lukashenko, who has been in power for 26 years, was perceived as marked by fraud and sparked months of large-scale protests, numerous deaths and more than 30,000 arrests. The opposition believes that Svetlana Tihanovskaia is in fact the winner of the elections.
Publisher: Adrian Dumitru
