Source: L’équipe du dimanche 1er août 2021 (+Ghost1 edit)
Belarusian athlete Krystsina Tsimanouskaya said on Sunday that she was forced to suspend her participation in the Tokyo Olympics and leave Japan, after criticizing her federation on social networks.
Belarusian Krystsina Tsimanouskaya had to leave Japan and give up participating in the Tokyo Olympics after criticizing her federation on social networks. "I ask the International Olympic Committee to help me, I was pressured and they are trying to get me out of the country without my consent," said the 24-year-old athlete in a video on Instagram.
"The IOC has seen the articles in the media, is studying the situation and has asked the Belarusian NOC (National Olympic Committee) for explanations," an IOC spokesperson told AFP. According to the Belarusian Sports Solidarity Foundation, Krystsina Tsimanouskaya was at Tokyo Haneda Airport, Terminal 3 on Sunday evening.
A possible request for political asylum
"The Belarusian athlete is being evacuated from Tokyo by force," said this Foundation on Telegram, specifying that he had requested the intervention of the Japanese police to prevent this departure. The Foundation then assured that the young woman had been placed under police protection and that a representative of the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs was going to the airport to meet her.
The athlete plans to apply for political asylum at the Austrian embassy in Tokyo, according to the same source. For its part, the Belarusian Olympic committee headed by Viktor Loukachenko, son of President Alexander Lukashenko, assured in a statement that the sportswoman had to suspend her participation in the Olympics on "decision of the doctors, because of her emotional and psychological state". A statement immediately qualified as a "lie" by the athlete in front of the press at the airport.
Krystsina Tsimanouskaya fiercely criticized the Belarusian Athletics Federation this week, claiming that she was forced to compete in the 4x400-meter relay, when she was initially supposed to run the 100-meter and 200-meter race, as two other athletes failed to compete. carried out a sufficient number of doping controls, she said.
"Why do we have to pay for your mistakes? [...] It's arbitrary, ”she rebelled in a post on Instagram. “I would never have reacted so harshly if I had been told in advance, explained the whole situation and asked if I was able to run a 400 meters. But we decided to do everything behind my back, ”she wrote in a separate post.
For months, the Lukashenko regime has relentlessly pursued a crackdown on opponents, journalists and activists, with the hope of definitively putting down the historic protest movement of 2020 against his re-election to a fifth term.