Belarus has arrested scores of relatives of dissidents ahead of presidential vote, activists say

TALLINN, Estonia — Belarusian authorities have detained over 100 relatives of political prisoners in a new wave of arrests ahead of January’s election in which authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko is seeking a seventh term, rights activists said Friday.

The Viasna human rights center said that the raids began Thursday, targeting relatives and friends of political prisoners in various cities across the country. They marked an apparent effort to uproot any remaining sign of opposition to Lukashenko, who has been in power for more than 30 years.

Belarus' opposition-leader-in-exile Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya denounced the latest arrests as a “blow to solidarity among the Belarusians ahead of January's pseudo-election.”

“The regime is trying to break our solidarity and scare the families helping their imprisoned relatives,” she told The Associated Press.

Andrej Stryzhak, head of the BySol group which coordinates assistance to political prisoners and helps evacuate dissidents, told the AP that his organization was doing its best to help people leave the country if they fear arrest.

"The authorities are trying to destroy a solidarity network that has emerged in Belarus during four years of brutal repression,” he said. “BySol's evacuation service has been working at full capacity. We have a lot of requests.”

Belarusian authorities responded to massive protests that were sparked by the widely disputed 2020 vote that gave Lukashenko a sixth term in office with a brutal crackdown in which about 65,000 people were arrested.

Major opposition figures were either imprisoned or fled the country. Human rights activists say Belarus now holds about 1,300 political prisoners and that many of them are denied adequate medical care and contact with their families.

The authorities have intensified repressions ahead of the Jan. 26 election. A recent wave of arrests also targeted participants in online chats created by residents of apartment buildings in various Belarusian cities.

At the same time, Lukashenko has pardoned 146 political prisoners since July in what observers saw as a signal that he's open for a dialogue with the U.S. and the European Union, which had imposed sweeping sanctions because of his crackdowns on dissent. Those freed had health problems, wrote petitions for pardons and said they repented.

Earlier this week, the authorities also allowed imprisoned activist Maria Kolesnikova, one of the most popular opposition figures, to meet with her father after more than 20 months without any communication with relatives or friends.

“The authorities are conducting an information campaign to create a semblance of a ‘thaw,’ which increases the risks for politically active Belarusians,” Stryzhak said.