Belarus opposition leader urges people to avoid elections, avoid protests By Reuters

(Removes reference in paragraph 6 to Tsikhanouskaya asking voters to spoil their votes)

By David Ljunggren and Kyaw Soe Oo

OTTAWA (Reuters) – The exiled leader of Belarus’s opposition is advising the people of the Eastern European nation not to protest in January’s election, saying the vote is a ruse designed to hand over fake president Alexander Lukashenko.

His election victory in 2020 sparked unprecedented protests with protesters accusing him of rigging the vote.

The police broke up the protests and human rights organizations say that around 30,000 people have been arrested at various times.

Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who ran against Lukashenko in 2020 and later went into exile, said she feared disruption if people took to the streets this time.

“We will not allow protests right now, because for four years people have been brutally oppressed,” he told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday in Ottawa.

“This so-called election is not the bullet that people need. So I ask people to sacrifice themselves,” he said.

Belarus’ Interior Ministry said last week that police would carry out pre-election tests to ensure that “extremism and terrorism” are prevented.

Lukashenko, 70, who has ruled the former Soviet Union since 1994 and is a close friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin, will run for a seventh term on January 26.

Tsikhanouskaya, who is based in Lithuania and has tight security, urged the international community not to see the consequences and said that democracy “could be braver”, especially by imposing more sanctions.

“I understand that it can interfere in some way (i) the comfortable life of the citizens of your countries, but sometimes it is necessary to sacrifice small comforts for greater goals,” he said.

Lukashenko and his supporters deny that he rigged the election and say that the majority of voters support him.

“I don’t decide whether I rule or not. … People entrusted me with this high position,” he told reporters in July 2023.

Despite the presence of the police, and the fact that 500,000 people have left the country of 9 million after 2020, people are making underground movements with acts of contempt for Lukashenko, he said.

“Our war, our job is to weaken him economically, we have weakened him politically,” he said, predicting that as soon as this repression ends, people will once again fill the streets.

“When the time comes, believe me, people will talk, people will show up.”

Since July, Lukashenko has issued six sets of amnesties for political prisoners. Human rights organizations claim that more than 1,200 prisoners are listed as political prisoners.

Tsikhanouskaya’s husband Syarhei Tsikhanouski has been in prison since 2020 after being banned from participating in the elections in which his wife was running for him.