Belarus Questions Nobel Laureate Svetlana Alexievich Over Protests

(Bloomberg) -- Belarusian investigators called in for questioning Nobel Prize winner Svetlana Alexievich, a member of the opposition council that seeks new elections and talks with Alexander Lukashenko about a peaceful end to his 26-year rule.

Lukashenko’s security services have begun to target the opposition’s coordination council and leaders of strike committees at state-owned enterprises after more than two weeks of protests against his claim of a landslide election victory. The president has called the council unconstitutional and ridiculed protesters as alcoholics, prostitutes and puppets of foreign powers.

“Maybe the world will help us so that Lukashenko will start talking to someone,” Alexievich said to a crowd as she arrived at the Investigative Committee in the capital Minsk on Wednesday. “Lukashenko will only talk to Putin, but he must start speaking with the people. Maybe Putin should be brought in somehow.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin has called the issue a domestic matter and said external meddling is unacceptable. The U.S. has denounced the elections, and European Union foreign ministers may give the go-ahead this week to blacklist 15 to 20 Belarusian officials deemed responsible for repression and election fraud, according to a senior EU official.

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Opposition candidate Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya has asked the EU to call for a new vote, while saying the protests are not geopolitical. Undermining ties with Russia is “not in the interest of Belarusian society,” opposition politician Pavel Latushka said in an interview with Bloomberg. “Belarus should become a strong concrete bridge between Russia and the West.”

Latushka was questioned for several hours Tuesday and had to agree to non-disclosure, he said. Maria Kalesnikava, an ally of Tsikhanouskaya and one of the most visible opposition members in Minsk, has been summoned for questioning Thursday.

“I refused to answer any questions and said all information can be found on the coordination committee’s website,” Alexievich, who won a 2015 Nobel Prize in literature, told Bloomberg after spending less than half an hour with investigators. She said they consider her a witness, and she didn’t sign any non-disclosure agreements.

Two members of the coordination council were sentenced to 10 days in jail on Tuesday, the first arrests of opposition leaders since former banker Viktor Babariko was jailed in June. It marks a shift from the police’s initial, brutal reaction, when at least 5 people died and 7,000 people were detained, some of whom say they were tortured.

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