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The Belarusian refugee athlete in Poland: "I will only return to my country when my safety is guaranteed"

2021-08-05T14:14:21.912Z


Kristsina Tsimanouskaia claims that it was her grandmother who alerted her by phone not to catch a plane from Tokyo to Minsk


“In Belarus you can speak, but you have to be careful what you say to avoid the consequences.

In Belarus everyone is afraid ”.

This is how the athlete Kristsina Tsimanouskaia said this Thursday in Warsaw, thousands of kilometers from the Tokyo Olympics, where she should have continued competing had she not had to flee her own country.

"I will only return to Belarus when I am convinced that my safety there is guaranteed," she said at a press conference.

"I am willing to help people who are in a similar situation, this could happen to anyone," lamented the sprinter, still nervous about everything she experienced in the last week.

"I do not think about politics, I think about my sports career," explained the athlete, who does not want her case to be used for political purposes.

“I decided on Poland after talking to my parents.

It is easier to have a visa and it is close to Belarus ”, he explained.

His family was precisely his great concern, as his father had suffered heart problems in recent weeks.

"Talk to him and he's fine."

More information

  • A Belarusian athlete seeks asylum in Poland after denouncing that they tried to send her to Minsk by force

  • A hybrid war on the edge of Europe

The incident began to unfold at the end of last week, after the athlete criticized the leaders of her team and her Olympic delegation, chaired by the son of President Alexandr Lukashenko. Tsimanouskaia, a specialist in 100 and 200 meters, protested on social media that she had been chosen to run in the 400-meter relay event after two of her teammates did not submit sufficient evidence to the doping control.

"I like to speak out," said Tsimanouskaia, who was pushed aside after refusing to compete in a test she had never run before.

Several members of the federation reported to her room and forcibly took her to the airport to return to Belarus.

"I managed to talk to my grandmother in the car, she told me not to return to Belarus under any circumstances," said the athlete, who managed to get away from her companions by showing the Japanese police a distress message written with the automatic translator.

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"I never imagined something like this could happen to me," he said. "I put a

post

on Instagram, I was already planning to take a break, my next competitions," he added. Now their plans are totally different. Just before appearing in public, he received a call from the director general of the Polish Ministry of Sports to address the next day to continue his sports career in the country. A plan that gains strength because her husband arrives in the country this very day and considers that he is his coach.

Source: elparis

All news articles on 2021-08-05

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