DAVOS, Switzerland: A trial in absentia opened Tuesday for Belarus’ top opposition leader, who denounced the proceedings as a farce and urged the West to bolster support for the country’s beleaguered opposition.
Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya was the main challenger in the August 2020 presidential election that extended President Alexander Lukashenko’s rule and was rejected by the Belarusian opposition and the West as a sham.
Tsikhanouskaya, who left the ex-Soviet nation shortly after the vote under pressure from authorities, is being tried in absentia along with four other leading opposition figures. She is facing charges of high treason, conspiracy to seize power and undermining national security and could face up to 20 years in prison if convicted.
Tsikhanouskaya said that she learned from media reports about the trial, which is being held behind closed doors, adding that she was unable to reach her lawyer appointed by the Belarusian authorities.
“It looks like farce,” Tsikhanouskaya told The Associated Press in an interview in Davos, Switzerland, where she is attending a global economic forum. “I will be sentenced to years and years. The judge will give me so many years as he is ordered to do.”
In December 2021, Tsikhanouskaya’s husband, Siarhei Tsikhanouski, was convicted and sentenced to 18 years in prison on charges of organizing mass unrest and inciting hatred, which he rejected. On Monday, the authorities leveled new accusations against him.
“The lawyer visits him once a week just to check if he’s at least alive, because the conditions in prisons are awful,” Tsikhanouskaya told the AP. “He was put very often in punishment cells and when you are in prison, you do not have rights at all.”
Her husband, a popular video blogger and activist, planned to challenge Lukashenko in the August 2020 vote, but was arrested in May 2020, two days after he declared his candidacy. Tsikhanouskaya, a former English teacher, ran in his place.
Tsikhanouskaya and other opposition activists rejected the official results that handed Lukashenko a sixth term in office as fraudulent. The vote triggered a months-long wave of unprecedented mass protests, the largest of which saw about 200,000 people taking to the streets of the Belarusian capital, Minsk. Lukashenko’s government responded with a violent crackdown on demonstrations, arresting more than 35,000 and brutally beating thousands.
The authorities have continued their repression, and 1,438 people in Belarus are currently in prisons on politically motivated charges, according to human rights groups.
Tsikhanouskaya urged the West to come out with a clear strategy on Belarus and boost support for the country’s opposition.
She emphasized that backing the opposition is particularly important as Russia used Belarus’ territory to invade Ukraine on Feb. 24 and continues to station its troops and weapons on the Belarusian territory. Tsikhanouskaya noted that opposition activists in Belarus help gather information about Russian troops movements in the country, adding that “we deliver this information to Ukraine.”
“I don’t want the world to overlook Belarus, to explain once again why Belarus is important, that without a safe, free, democratic Belarus, there will not be stable peace in the region,” Tsikhanouskaya said.
Belarus’ opposition leader denounces her trial as farce
https://arab.news/vry5j
Belarus’ opposition leader denounces her trial as farce
- Tsikhanouskaya is being tried in absentia along with four other leading opposition figures
- “I will be sentenced to years and years. The judge will give me so many years as he is ordered to do”
WHO chief says reasons US gave for withdrawing ‘untrue’
- US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced in a joint statement Thursday that Washington had formally withdrawn from the WHO
- And in a post on X, Tedros added: “Unfortunately, the reasons cited for the US decision to withdraw from WHO are untrue”
GENEVA: The head of the UN’s health agency on Saturday pushed back against Washington’s stated reasons for withdrawing from the World Health Organization, dismissing US criticism of the WHO as “untrue.”
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned that US announcement this week that it had formally withdrawn from the WHO “makes both the US and the world less safe.”
And in a post on X, he added: “Unfortunately, the reasons cited for the US decision to withdraw from WHO are untrue.”
He insisted: “WHO has always engaged with the US, and all Member States, with full respect for their sovereignty.”
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced in a joint statement Thursday that Washington had formally withdrawn from the WHO.
They accused the agency, of numerous “failures during the Covid-19 pandemic” and of acting “repeatedly against the interests of the United States.”
The WHO has not yet confirmed that the US withdrawal has taken effect.
- ‘Trashed and tarnished’ -
The two US officials said the WHO had “trashed and tarnished” the United States, and had compromised its independence.
“The reverse is true,” the WHO said in a statement.
“As we do with every Member State, WHO has always sought to engage with the United States in good faith.”
The agency strenuously rejected the accusation from Rubio and Kennedy that its Covid response had “obstructed the timely and accurate sharing of critical information that could have saved American lives and then concealed those failures.”
Kennedy also suggested in a video posted to X Friday that the WHO was responsible for “the Americans who died alone in nursing homes (and) the small businesses that were destroyed by reckless mandates” to wear masks and get vaccinated.
The US withdrawal, he insisted, was about “protecting American sovereignty, and putting US public health back in the hands of the American people.”
Tedros warned on X that the statement “contains inaccurate information.”
“Throughout the pandemic, WHO acted quickly, shared all information it had rapidly and transparently with the world, and advised Member States on the basis of the best available evidence,” the agency said.
“WHO recommended the use of masks, vaccines and physical distancing, but at no stage recommended mask mandates, vaccine mandates or lockdowns,” it added.
“We supported sovereign governments to make decisions they believed were in the best interests of their people, but the decisions were theirs.”
- Withdrawal ‘raises issues’ -
The row came as Washington struggled to dislodge itself from the WHO, a year after US President Donald Trump signed an executive order to that effect.
The one-year withdrawal process reached completion on Thursday, but Kennedy and Rubio regretted in their statement that the UN health agency had “not approved our withdrawal and, in fact, claims that we owe it compensation.”
WHO has highlighted that when Washington joined the organization in 1948, it reserved the right to withdraw, as long as it gave one year’s notice and had met “its financial obligations to the organization in full for the current fiscal year.”
But Washington has not paid its 2024 or 2025 dues, and is behind around $260 million.
“The notification of withdrawal raises issues,” WHO said Saturday, adding that the topic would be examined during WHO’s Executive Board meeting next month and by the annual World Health Assembly meeting in May.
“We hope the US will return to active participation in WHO in the future,” Tedros said Saturday.
“Meanwhile, WHO remains steadfastly committed to working with all countries in pursuit of its core mission and constitutional mandate: the highest attainable standard of health as a fundamental right for all people.”
