Svetlana Tikhanovskaya’s campaigner said she fled her apartment for security reasons after police detained several of her older employees, in what critics called an attempt to intimidate the opposition ahead of the crucial vote.
Tikhanovskaya has previously said in interviews that she had to send her children abroad after receiving threats that they would be placed in an orphanage.
“She will not spend the night at home, so she is not alone,” Tikhanovskaya’s campaign said. “But she has not fled from Minsk, she will stay in the city.”
Tikhanovskaya, a former English tutor, became an unexpected rival and face of the opposition in the past two months after taking over from her husband, Sergey Tikhanovskiy, a popular YouTube blogger and former candidate who has been jailed since May.
Tikhanovskaya went along with two women who ran other opposition campaigns, after their candidates were also prevented from running or imprisoned.
Their campaign rallies saw major turnouts, even in small Belarusian cities not known for their protest activity. The largest event in the capital Minsk this July gathered about 63,000 people, making it the largest demonstration in recent decades.
On the eve of the vote, Tikhanovskaya’s campaign manager Maria Kolesnikova was briefly arrested and taken to a police station upon request. A day earlier, campaign manager Maria Moroz had also been briefly arrested.
Sunday’s main voting day was preceded by several early voting days. Late Saturday, the Central Election Commission of Belarus reported a record number of recordings, saying 41.70% of all voters had already cast their ballots.
Users in Central Minsk on Sunday are having difficulty accessing key internet services and social media networks, according to several local media reports and a CNN stringer on the ground.
Most apps and websites take longer to load, including Whatsapp, Viber and Facebook messenger. Telegram messenger, which serves as the main means of communication for Belarusian opposition, is sometimes unavailable or only accessible through proxy servers.
NetBlocks, an NGO that monitors worldwide shutdowns, said in a tweet that it has recorded major disruptions in Belarus: “Real network data shows social media and other services that are currently unavailable on multiple landline and cellular operator. “
Lukashenko has ruled the former Soviet republic of more than 9 million people since 1994. He has long drawn international criticism for suppressing dissent, and the country’s secret police – still known as the KGB – often hold and arrest opposition activists and independent journalists.
Independent observers in Belarus such as the “Honest People” group for volunteer monitoring said they had found significant discrepancies between the officially announced turnout and the number of people entering the polling station they could count.
Most independent observers are out of control because of these elections. Several dozen independent observers were arrested on Saturday and early Sunday, according to the “Honest People” and “Right to Choose” monitoring initiatives.
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) said in July that it would not send observers to Belarus because of no invitation from the country’s authorities and expressed “deep concern over reports that proposed candidates were intimidated and opposition activists arrested. “
In the run-up to the election, law enforcement apparently inspired their efforts when insurgent police made multiple arrests to break up improvised demonstrations against Lukashenko. Local media companies have warned of a possible shutdown of internet in case protests erupted across the country.
Journalist Mikalai Anishchanka in Minsk contributed to this report.
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