Vienna, Austria:
Belarusian Olympic athlete Krystsina Tsimanouskaya arrived in Austria on Wednesday en route to Poland, exactly where she is anticipated to take refuge soon after saying she feared for her life if forced to return home.
The 24-year-old sprinter has been at the centre of a diplomatic drama in the middle of the Games due to the fact searching for protection from Tokyo 2020 employees on Sunday, saying her group was attempting to bundle her onto a plane soon after she publicly criticised her coaches.
In an unexpected twist on Wednesday the athlete made a last-minute switch and decided not to board her flight to Warsaw, which has presented her a humanitarian visa, rather taking a plane to the Austrian capital.
The Austrian Airlines flight arrived at Vienna airport shortly soon after 3:00 pm (1300 GMT) on Wednesday.
A VIP van followed by two police autos have been waiting to escort Tsimanouskaya from the plane.
“According to our information, she is scheduled to head to Warsaw this evening,” an Austrian foreign ministry spokesman told AFP, despite the fact that the ministry added that should really she “want to make an asylum application in Austria, she can of course count on our support”.
Tsimanouskaya had entered the airport in Tokyo surrounded by a phalanx of safety, wearing a yellow facemask and with the pink ends of her hair visible in a bun.
She declined to speak to media gathered at her gate, but waved as she rounded the corner towards her plane.
Before travelling she had been sheltering in the Polish embassy in Tokyo for the previous two nights soon after calling for international enable, and activists have stated she will go to Warsaw.
Belarus has been wracked by political upheaval and a crackdown on dissent soon after disputed elections that returned strongman Alexander Lukashenko to energy last year.
Tsimanouskaya was one of more than 2,000 Belarusian sports figures who signed an open letter calling for new elections and for political prisoners to be freed.
But her problems in Tokyo came soon after she posted on her Instagram, criticising her coaches for getting into her into a race without having informing her very first.
Her husband has fled to Ukraine and on Wednesday the Polish government stated he had also been offered a humanitarian visa.
The pair are anticipated to meet up in Poland, a staunch critic of Lukashenko’s regime and home to a developing quantity of dissidents.
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki stated Tuesday he had spoken to the “courageous” Tsimanouskaya, who is “currently well taken care of and safe”.
“I assured her that she can count on the support and solidarity of Poland,” he wrote on Facebook.
Dissident identified hanged
The International Olympic Committee has stated it will investigate Belarus’s Olympic group, but activists have named for the country’s Olympic committee to be suspended and its athletes to compete as neutrals.
Spokesman Mark Adams stated Wednesday that the IOC had received a report from Belarus’s Olympic committee, which was “being evaluated”.
And he stated the IOC has opened a disciplinary commission “to establish facts in this case”.
NGO Global Athlete stated Tsimanouskaya’s “alleged kidnapping… is yet another example of the alarming athlete abuse occurring in Belarus”.
Lukashenko and his son Viktor have been banned from Olympic events more than the targeting of athletes for their political views.
Shortly prior to the Tokyo Games, Lukashenko warned sports officials and athletes that he anticipated benefits in Japan.
“Think about it before going,” he stated. “If you come back with nothing, it’s better for you not to come back at all.”
The alleged try to return Tsimanouskaya to Belarus has prompted condemnation, with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken accusing Minsk of “another act of transnational repression”.
In energy due to the fact 1994, Lukashenko sparked international outrage in May by dispatching a fighter jet to intercept a Ryanair plane flying from Greece to Lithuania to arrest a dissident on board.
The Olympic saga came as police in Ukraine stated a missing Belarusian activist, whose NGO aids his compatriots flee the nation, had been identified hanged in a park in Kiev.
Police stated they had opened a murder probe and would pursue all leads such as “murder disguised as suicide”, when activists accused authorities of “an operation… to liquidate a Belarusian who presented a true danger to the regime”.
The United Nations has named on Ukrainian authorities to conduct a “thorough, impartial and effective investigation” into the death.
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