Belarusian legislators have scheduled the next presidential elections for January 26, in which authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko is widely expected to emerge victorious. Numerous opposition leaders have been imprisoned or have had to leave the country.
Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the exiled opposition leader who ran against Lukashenko in 2020, called for the upcoming elections not to be recognized due to the current political repression. In a statement to The Associated Press, Tsikhanouskaya asserted that the election is a farce without a genuine electoral process and in a climate of terror, urging Belarusians and the international community to reject it.
According to Viasna, a prominent human rights group in Belarus, there are approximately 1,300 political prisoners in the country, including opposition party leaders and Ales Bialiatski, the group’s founder and 2022 Nobel Peace Prize winner. Despite recently releasing 115 political prisoners, Lukashenko has been criticized for using this issue to seek recognition from the West and ease sanctions against his government.
Lukashenko, who seeks his seventh consecutive term, announced on Russian state television his intention to run in these elections. His reelection in 2020 sparked massive protests deemed fraudulent by the opposition and the West, leading to a brutal crackdown by the government and thousands of people detained and beaten.