Belarusians fleeing repression at home say they face new threats and intimidation abroad

TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — More than a half-million Belarusians have fled their country in the past four years as the authoritarian government launched a harsh crackdown on its political opponents. Some of them, however, are discovering that they can’t escape intimidation and threats in their new lives abroad.

Dziana Maiseyenka, 28, was detained without warning while crossing the border from Armenia to Georgia, where she had taken refuge from Belarus a year ago to escape what she called “the nightmare at home.”

Authorities in Minsk, she was told, had issued an international arrest warrant against her on charges of “organizing mass unrest.”

She knows what a return to Belarus will mean: Her father was imprisoned for nearly three years on similar charges. When he was released last year, he was promptly arrested again.

As hard-line President Alexander Lukashenko seeks his seventh term next year to extend his three-decade rule, opposition leaders in exile say he is ramping up the pressure on Belarusians who moved abroad. The aim is to avoid a repeat of the mass protests that broke out around the 2020 election by quashing any opposition support from abroad.

Months of large demonstrations over that widely denounced balloting resulted in more than 65,000 people arrested over the last four years, with many of them severely beaten, according to the Belarusian human rights group Viasna. Its Nobel Peace Prize-winning founder, Ales Bialiatski, is among those imprisoned.

Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, 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.

“Ahead of the 2025 campaign, repressions against Belarusians abroad will most likely only intensify as the regime tries to intimidate those who call for increased international sanctions and nonrecognition of Lukashenko’s legitimacy,” she said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Tsikhanouskaya said her office gets hundreds of requests a month from Belarusians abroad who say criminal cases have been opened against them in their homeland, and it is intervening in at least 15 countries where extradition requests have been made. Other emigres complain their identity documents have been invalidated by the government in Minsk or that relatives at home have come under pressure.

Pavel Latushka, a prominent opposition figure in exile in Poland, says he’s received threats, which Polish authorities are investigating, and his website came under a cyberattack that he blames on Lukashenko’s government.

Belarusian sprinter Krystsina Tsimanouskaya, who sought political asylum in Poland three years ago after the Tokyo Olympics, also said she had received threatening messages in Warsaw.

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

In another, separate instance, she said she noticed “two men were constantly following me” in her neighborhood. “They went outside when I went outside. This was not some kind of coincidence,” Tsimanouskaya said, adding that it ended after she reported it to police. At the Paris Games, Polish team officials advised her to keep to the more secure athletes village whenever possible.

Viasna representative Pavel Sapelka said the Belarus KGB is infiltrating the diaspora, organizing surveillance and taking video of large protests abroad, and then initiating hundreds of criminal cases at home.

“Official Minsk has begun sending out extradition requests en masse, and the logic here is very simple -- even if they manage to bring back only a few from abroad, everyone will be scared,” he said.

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

In a letter to the Belarusian opposition office, she said Serbian authorities were told Hniot’s case “was politically motivated” and he “would face reprisals” if returned to his homeland.

“The route to Belarus is a direct road to prison,” Hniot told AP from Belgrade, where he’s under house arrest while awaiting a final ruling.

In August, two anti-Lukashenko activists were deported from Sweden after being refused political asylum. The mother and son who had participated in protests in Belarus were taken by Swedish authorities to the Lithuania-Belarus frontier and handed over to Belarusian border guards. The son was detained at the border.

“Belarusians need European solidarity not in words but in deeds,” said Zmitser Vaserman, who represents a Belarusian exile group in Sweden, urging a “European moratorium on the deportation of Belarusian citizens who are persecuted for political reasons.”

To protect the interests of Belarusians abroad, the opposition has created “people’s embassies” in 24 countries, including in EU member states, the U.K., Canada, Australia and Brazil.

Belarusian authorities responded by declaring these “people’s embassies” to be extremist groups; cooperation with them is punishable by up to seven years in prison and confiscation of property. In the spring, authorities carried out a wave of searches and arrests inside Belarus, initiating hundreds of criminal cases at home and abroad.

“Extremist groups have launched information campaigns to discredit our country in the eyes of Western politicians,” said Siarhei Kabakovich, spokesman for the Investigative Committee of Belarus. “The pseudo-embassies are trying to damage the national security of Belarus and are carrying out measures to isolate diplomatic missions of the Foreign Ministry system and block any contacts between foreign citizens, organizations and governments with Belarusian diplomats.”

In Vilnius, where opposition leader Tsikhnanouskaya is based, several Belarusian institutions were attacked this month. Windows were broken at a Belarusian Orthodox church and a center of Belarusian culture, and obscene messages were left near a refugee shelter.

Lithuania’s Foreign Ministry in a statement on X condemned “the acts of vandalism against the Belarusian community carried out according to the KGB playbook” and vowed to punish those responsible.

Tsikhanouskaya called for an investigation, blaming “the Lukashenko regime, which is constantly trying to create an atmosphere of fear and hate in Belarusian society.”

Belarus now requires its citizens to renew their passports inside the country. That leaves many exiles in a bind, fearing prosecution if they return home to get new documents.

Of particular concern are children born abroad to parents who cannot return to Belarus to get documents confirming their citizenship, said Anaïs Marin, the U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in Belarus, because “this may lead to loss of proof of citizenship and, potentially, to statelessness.”

Many Belarusians returning home have been arrested at the border, said Tsikhanouskaya. Some record video confessions of repentance, which are widely believed to be coerced.

Katsiaryna Mendryk, a student at the University of Warsaw who was arrested in August, said in a subsequent video confession that she “really regrets participating in extremist activities.” She goes on trial this month, facing up to seven years in prison.

Maiseyenka, the woman detained at the Georgia-Armenia border, spent five days in limbo before returning safely to the Georgian capital of Tbilisi. Tikhanouskaya’s office intervened on her behalf, and Armenia decided not to extradite her, she told AP.

Maiseyenka said she was “a lucky exception” but “realized with horror how dangerous it is to be Belarusian.”

“Lukashenko is showing that he can hang the fate of any citizen by a thread,” she said. “This means that a Belarusian anywhere in the world needs to be prepared for unpleasant surprises.”

___

Associated Press writer James Ellingworth contributed to this report.