Belarusians fleeing repression in their homeland say they face new threats and intimidation abroad

TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — More than half a million Belarusians have fled their country over the past four years as the authoritarian government launched a crackdown on its political opponents, but some of them are finding they cannot escape intimidation and threats in their new lives abroad.

Dziana Maiseyenka, 28, was arrested without warning as she crossed the border from Armenia into Georgia. She fled from Belarus a year ago to escape what she called “the nightmare at home.”

She was told that the authorities in Minsk had issued an international arrest warrant against her, accusing her of “organising mass unrest”.

She knows what a return to Belarus would mean for her: her father spent almost three years in prison on similar charges. When he was released last year, he was promptly arrested again.

As hardline President Alexander Lukashenko seeks his seventh term next year to extend his three-decade rule, opposition leaders in exile say he is stepping up pressure on Belarusians who have emigrated abroad. The aim is to avoid a repeat of the mass protests that erupted around the 2020 election by suppressing any foreign support for the opposition.

Months of mass demonstrations against the widely condemned vote have led to more than 65,000 people being arrested and many of them severely beaten over the past four years, according to the Belarusian human rights group Viasna. Among those detained is its founder and Nobel Peace Prize winner Ales Bialiatski.

Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who was Lukashenko's main challenger in 2020 before fleeing to Lithuania the day after the election, says Belarus has launched a systematic campaign against dissidents abroad.

“In the run-up to the 2025 election campaign, repression against Belarusians abroad will most likely only increase as the regime seeks to intimidate those who demand increased international sanctions and non-recognition of Lukashenko's legitimacy,” she said in an interview with the Associated Press.

Tikhanovskaya said her office receives hundreds of requests every month from Belarusians abroad who say that criminal proceedings have been initiated against them in their home country. The office intervenes in at least 15 countries where extradition requests have been made. Other emigrants complain that their identity papers have been declared invalid by the government in Minsk or that their relatives at home have come under pressure.

Pavel Latushka, a prominent opposition figure in exile in Poland, says he has received threats that are being investigated by Polish authorities and that his website was the target of a cyberattack that he blames on Lukashenko's government.

Belarusian sprinter Krystsina Tsimanouskaya, who applied for political asylum in Poland three years ago after the Olympic Games in Tokyo, also said she had received threatening letters in Warsaw.

One said: “They would rip open my stomach if I went outside,” Tsimanouskaya told AP at the Paris Olympics.

In another, different case, she noticed that in her neighborhood, “two men were constantly following her.” “They went outside when I went outside. It was not a coincidence,” Tsimanouskaya said, adding that it stopped after she reported it to police. At the Paris Games, officials from the Polish team advised her to stay in the safer athletes' village if possible.

Viasna representative Pavel Sapelka said the Belarusian KGB infiltrates the diaspora, organizes surveillance and films large protests abroad, and then initiates hundreds of criminal cases at home.

“Official Minsk has started sending out extradition requests en masse, and the logic behind it is very simple: even if they manage to bring back just a few from abroad, everyone will be afraid,” he said.

Independent director Andrei Hniot, a Lukashenko critic who made films about the Minsk protests, was arrested at Belgrade airport last year on an Interpol warrant at the request of Belarusian authorities on alleged tax evasion charges. A Serbian court ordered his extradition in June, but EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen intervened.

In a letter to the Belarusian opposition office, she wrote that Serbian authorities had been told that Hniot's case was “politically motivated” and that he would “face reprisals” if he returned to his home country.

“The road to Belarus leads straight to prison,” Hniot told AP from Belgrade, where he is under house arrest while awaiting a final verdict.

In August, two Lukashenko opponents were expelled from Sweden after being denied political asylum. A mother and son, who had taken part in protests in Belarus, were taken by Swedish authorities to the Lithuanian-Belarusian border and handed over to Belarusian border guards. The son was arrested at the border.