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VIENNA, Austria (AP) – A plane carrying a Belarusian Olympic sprinter seeking refuge landed in Austria on Wednesday after resisting an attempt by her Olympic team officials to send her home, where she feared reprisals from the authoritarian government.
Krystsina Tsimanouskaya boarded a plane at Tokyo Narita International Airport bound for Vienna, but was due to travel to Poland, which offered her a humanitarian visa. Before leaving Japan, Tsimanouskaya, 24, said she hoped she could continue her running career, but safety was her immediate priority.
Her husband fled the country quickly this week when he realized his wife would not be returning to Belarus.
Vienna Airport said the direct flight Tsimanouskaya had landed on Wednesday at 3:08 p.m. (1:08 p.m. GMT). Vadim Krivosheyev, an activist with the Belarusian Sports Solidarity Foundation, said Tsimanouskaya flew to Austria instead of Warsaw on the advice of Polish authorities.
“The decision to change the route and go to Vienna was taken by the Polish side for security reasons,” Krivosheyev told The Associated Press.
Tsimanouskaya was due to travel to Warsaw later on Wednesday, according to Krivosheyev.
Tsimanouskaya’s experience at the Tokyo Games has become an international issue after accusing Belarusian team officials of pushing her to the airport several days ago and attempting to put her on a plane for Belarus because she criticized the management of the team on social networks. Team officials said she would face retaliation at home, she said.
Officials “made it clear that upon returning home I would certainly face some form of punishment,” Tsimanouskaya told the PA on a video call from Tokyo on Tuesday. “There were also thinly disguised clues that others would be waiting for me.”
She added that she believed she would be expelled from the Belarusian national team.
“I would love to continue my sports career because I’m only 24 and had plans for at least two more Olympics,” Tsimanouskaya said. But “for now, the only thing that worries me is my safety.”
Reached by telephone on Tuesday, Dzmitry Dauhalionak, head of the Belarusian delegation to the Summer Olympics, declined to comment, saying he had “no words”.
Tsimanouskaya’s criticism of the way officials were handling his team sparked a massive backlash in state media in Belarus. The runner said on Instagram that she entered the 4×400 relay despite never competing in the event. She was then banned from participating in the 200 meters.
The sprinter on Tuesday called on international sports authorities “to investigate the situation, which gave the order, which effectively made the decision that I can no longer compete”. She suggested possible penalties against the head coach.
In the AP interview, Tsimanouskaya also expressed concern for his parents, who remain in Belarus. Her husband, Arseni Zdanevich, told the AP he had decided to leave the country when Tsimanouskaya told him she would not be returning.
Belarus has been rocked by months of protests after President Alexander Lukashenko was given a sixth term in an August 2020 presidential election that the opposition and the West saw as rigged. Authorities responded to the protests with a sweeping crackdown that saw more than 35,000 people arrested and thousands beaten by police.
In a show of determination to quell dissent at all costs, Belarusian authorities hijacked an airliner that was flying from Greece to Lithuania in May and ordered it to land in the Belarusian capital, where they arrested a journalist opposition on board.
Amid Tsimanouskaya’s rift with team officials, two other Belarusian athletes announced their intention to stay abroad.
Heptathlete Yana Maksimava said she and her husband Andrei Krauchanka, who won decathlon silver at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, will remain in Germany.
“I have no plans to go home after all the events that have happened in Belarus,” Maksimava said on Instagram, adding that “you may lose not only your freedom but also your life” in his homeland. .
The authoritarian Belarusian president, who led the Belarusian National Olympic Committee for nearly a quarter of a century before handing over the post to his eldest son in February, has shown a keen interest in the sport, seeing him as a key part of the national prestige.
Lukashenko and his son have both been banned from the Tokyo Games by the International Olympic Committee, which has investigated complaints from athletes that they were intimidated during the crackdown on anti-government protests last year.
Western leaders condemned the treatment of Tsimanouskaya by Belarusian authorities.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken denounced the attempt by Belarusian officials to force Tsimanouskaya to return to Belarus for exercising freedom of expression as “another act of transnational repression”.
“Such actions violate the Olympic spirit, are an affront to fundamental rights and cannot be tolerated,” Blinken said on Twitter.
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Follow AP’s coverage of Belarus at https://apnews.com/hub/belarus
___ Isachenkov reported from Moscow. Associated Press editors Yuras Karmanau in Kiev, Ukraine and Frank Jordans in Berlin contributed to this report.
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