Belarus keep arresting former presidential candidates
2023.01.12 03:08
Belarus keep arresting former presidential candidates
By Kristina Sobol
Budrigannews.com – His team said that a politician from the opposition who ran against long-time leader Alexander Lukashenko in the contentious 2020 presidential election has been detained.
According to a Facebook post, Andrei Dmitriev, 41, an activist who leads an anti-Lukashenko social movement, was detained on Wednesday in the capital Minsk. page.
It added that the reason for his custody was still unknown.
The detention received no response from Belarusian authorities.
In power since 1994, Lukashenko claimed victory in the 2020 election, which was marred by allegations of voter fraud and harsh opposition repression by Lukashenko-supporting authorities.
His announcement of victory over Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the leading opposition candidate, sparked weeks of massive protests in which hundreds of thousands of Belarusians demanded that Lukashenko step down.
According to the official results, Dmitriev finished fourth in the election with 1.2% of the votes cast.
The protests were violently put down by Lukashenko, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has since intensified a campaign of repression to silence political opposition in the country.
As a result of the crackdown, rights groups estimate that there are approximately 1,500 political prisoners in Belarus.
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