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Alexander Opeikin is one of the most successful handball clubs in Belarus, the former Soviet Union.
Today, he is wanted for “endangering national security” and is in exile in Ukraine.
In 2012, he founded the Vityaz Club in a country of 9.5 million people, and its president, Alexander Lukashenko, made sports the ideological pillar of his decades-long rule.
Since taking office in 1994, he has issued government awards, keys to cars and apartments to athletes, as well as thousands of dollars in cash for their victories in international championships and the Olympics.
“He tried to make the athletes loyal to him and to further convey that loyalty to their audience,” 35-year-old Opekin told Al Jazeera.
Lukashenko’s term as president of the Belarusian Olympic Committee (NOC) is only slightly shorter than his current chairman — last November, after the International Olympic Committee (IOC) banned him from participating in the Tokyo Olympics, he terminated this term.
Now, the National Olympic Committee is led by Lukashenko’s eldest son Victor, who is also banned from participating.
The ban was implemented after Lukashenko’s brutal suppression of large-scale anti-government protests that swept Belarus after Belarus won a controversial vote on August 9, 2020.
The polls gave the 66-year-old president his sixth presidency, but his political opponents and some poll workers claimed that his overwhelming victory was manipulated.
Athletes protest
Opekin’s handball club stopped training in protest and was disqualified from the national championship.
He and his members participated in the most recent rally and were one of more than 1,000 athletes. They signed a petition urging Lukashenko to stop the repression.
Lukashenko considered this to be “treason.”
“He is very afraid of protesting athletes because he knows that well-known athletes will strongly influence public opinion,” said Opekin, who fled to neighboring Ukraine after being accused in April of “endangering national security” and “intentionally spreading false information.”
“Lukashenko thinks they are all traitors,” he added.
Today, Opekin leads the Belarusian Sports Solidarity Fund, which is located in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, and aims to help athletes who are in trouble or in exile.
According to the Ukrainian branch of global human rights organization Amnesty International, at least 95 people face detention after participating in the protests, 7 people face criminal charges that they believe are politically motivated, and 124 people suffer other forms of abuse.
Amnesty International researcher Heather McGill said in a statement last week: “Belarusian athletes have paid a high price for daring to speak up. It is clear that sports are now the battlefield for Belarusian revenge.”
No more games
But the plight of Belarusian athletes only attracted international attention earlier this month, when Olympic sprinter Christina Zimanusskaya rejected her team’s order to return home early after the Tokyo Olympics.
The 24-year-old girl said she was worried about her safety in Belarus.
Even after Poland granted her a humanitarian visa, concerns about her safety forced her to change planes at the last minute and fly to Warsaw via Vienna.
An incident in May exacerbated these concerns. Lukashenko sent a military plane to force a passenger plane to Lithuania to fly over Belarus and land in Minsk. Then the police arrested the opposition journalist Roman Protasevich on board. (Roman Protasevich), accused of being involved in “extremism”.
If found guilty, Protasevich will face up to 15 years in prison. He appeared in a “confession” video that supporters said was recorded under duress.
Then another Belarusian Olympian decided to defect.
On August 3, the decathlete Andrei Klaushanka, who won the silver medal at the 2008 Beijing Olympics and maintained the national record of Belarus, decided to stay in Germany with his wife, heptathlete Yana Maksimava. Wrote on Instagram.
“A person will not only lose freedom, but also the life there,” she wrote under a photo of herself and her youngest son.
“You can breathe freely here and be one of the people fighting for the freedom of the people, relatives and loved ones; we will definitely have the upper hand,” she added.
The couple made their decision a few hours after the 26-year-old Belarusian opposition figure Vital Shyshou was found hanged in a park near his home in Kiev.
Ukrainian police said he was beaten on his body, and his friends claimed that he was assassinated by Belarusian security personnel.
As far as Lukashenko is concerned, he denied that Belarus was connected with Shyshou’s death and stated that He believes Zimanusskaya was “manipulated” by “external forces” to make a decision.
The rule of law “collapsed”
Since gaining independence in 1991, no election in Belarus has been regarded as free and fair by international observers, and every election has been accompanied by violent suppression of dissent.
But last year’s rally-and Lukashenko’s response-was unprecedented in scope.
They attracted as many as 200,000 people and lasted for several weeks, paralyzing the city center and prompting the workers of the state-owned factory, Lukashenko’s core supporter, to strike.
Human rights groups said that about 30,000 protesters were arrested and thousands were allegedly beaten.
According to independent media reports, 7 people were shot during the protest or died shortly after the protest.
“What we have seen since then [the election]It is the complete breakdown of the rule of law in the country and the beginning of the end of the Lukashenko regime,” Ivar Dyer, a senior policy adviser at the Norwegian Helsinki Committee, a human rights watchdog, told Al Jazeera.
But the protesters did not have a charismatic and determined leader.
Presidential candidate Svyatlana Zihanusskaya won second place in last year’s poll with 10% of the vote and fled to neighboring Lithuania. Older and experienced opposition figures were afraid Returned to Belarus from exile.
Economic turmoil
Despite being sanctioned and politically desperate for the West’s response to last year’s protests, Lukashenko’s Belarus still maintains an economic lead.
Last year, many experts predicted an economic crisis, but in the post-pandemic economic boom, the prices of Belarus’s main exports — potash, gasoline and food — skyrocketed.
Belarus has a Soviet-era chemical plant and two large oil processing plants that process discounted Russian crude oil.
Although many companies and programmers fled the country during the crackdown, its thriving IT department also thrived, which enjoyed tax breaks and other benefits.
However, experts warn that the harm in 2022 may be much greater.
“Next year, the Belarusian economy may start a long-term recession. [coupled with] If you add inflation, there will be stagflation,” Kiev analyst Alexei Kushchi told Al Jazeera.
He also stated that Russia has reduced its subsidy to Minsk from 5% of Belarus’ gross domestic product (GDP) to about 2%.
For decades, Belarus has relied on Russia’s billions of dollars in loans and exported most of its exports to its huge eastern neighbor, where hundreds of thousands of Belarusians work in the construction and agricultural sectors.
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