The leader of the Belarusian opposition in exile, Svitlana Tikhanovskaya, said that an unknown person informed her about the possible death in prison of her husband Serhii, whom she had not heard from since March, reports AFP, citing news. ro.

“Today I received a very strange and terrible message. An unknown person wrote that my husband Sergey died in Yodino prison,” Svitlana Tikhanovskaya wrote on Twitter late Monday evening, adding that “there is no evidence for this statement.”

In December 2021, Serhiy Tikhanovsky was sentenced to 18 years in prison on a number of charges, including “organizing mass riots” in this country, which is an ally of Moscow and which has been ruled by Oleksandr Lukashenko with an iron hand since 1994.

His conviction is seen by many as political revenge against the man who challenged Oleksandr Lukashenka ahead of the 2020 presidential election, sparking a large protest movement that was brutally suppressed.

After her husband’s arrest, in May 2020, a few months before the presidential elections, Svitlana Tikhanovska ran for office in his place and became a leading figure in the opposition, later she was forced to go into exile.

• The leader of the opposition from Belarus during his first visit to Romania, interview with HotNews.ro: “Lukashenka’s regime has a special resonance for Romanians, you felt our pain”

“Lawyers are no longer allowed to visit him”

According to Svitlana Tikhanouska, rumors about her husband’s death have been circulating for the first time, but her opponent has not heard about him since March 9, and “lawyers are not allowed to see him.”

“We have not received a single letter and there has been no communication through lawyers,” she said on Facebook.

“This is another attempt by the regime to put pressure not only on political prisoners, who are deprived of any contact with the outside world and are kept in terrible conditions, but also on their relatives, who are forced to live without any information,” he said. author Svitlana Tykhanouska .

“I worry about Serhii every day. It’s very difficult to live when you don’t know if your husband is alive or not,” she added.

The leader of the opposition in the controversial 2020 presidential elections, Svitlana Tikhanovska, like thousands of her compatriots, was forced to emigrate in the face of government repression.

The leader of the Belarusian opposition was convicted in absentia

In March, she was sentenced in absentia to 15 years in prison on a number of charges, including “conspiracy to seize power.” Many other dissidents received very heavy sentences in Belarus.

In November 2022, while staying for several days in Bucharest, the leader of the democratic opposition in Belarus, Svitlana Tihanovska, gave an interview to HotNews.ro, in which she explained what she expects from Romanians, how Belarusians see the war in Ukraine or when the Lukashenko regime will fall, and also answered personal questions about life in exile and how he communicates with his husband in prison.

“Serhiy has been in prison since 2019 and was periodically sent to prison, to a terrible place, it is a small and empty room without a bed, it can only be used at night. He has no blanket or pillow, and it’s as cold inside as it is outside. As with other political prisoners, I can communicate with him only through lawyers. Lawyers are postmen for political prisoners,” Svitlana Tikhanovska told HotNews.ro.