Written by Jonathan Du Fault
Krystsina Tsimanouskaya, a Belarusian Olympic sprinter, criticized her country’s sporting officials for entering her into a race she was unfamiliar with.
The President of Belarus, known as Europe’s last dictator, took this criticism very personally.
Tsimanouskaya was immediately asked by her country to leave the games and return home to “face the consequences” of questioning the wishes of her President.
She left Tokyo on a flight bound for neighboring Austria after spending two nights in the Polish embassy in Tokyo. Poland has offered Tsimanouskaya humanitarian visa and she is expected to except this offer.
Her husband, Arseni Zdanevich, has already fled from Belarus to the Ukraine in order to avoid being “punished” as well. The two must start a new life in a new country.
The incident happened when Tsimanouskaya posted on her Instagram she had been told to run the 4×400 because other athletes had not taken the required number of dope tests to compete.
Experts say that the sports-loving Lukashenko, whose son runs the national Olympic committee and who inherited the role from his father, could not allow the sprinter’s criticism to go unpunished.
Lukashenko “is really very sensitive in terms of sports and even more so when there’s criticism — he likes to act as if he is a sports man, in such good physical shape, who takes care of sports people,” said Veronica Laputska, co-founder of the Eurasian States in Transition Research Center, a think tank based in Warsaw. “There’s a personal element here. It will have irritated him.”
Experts also say this is the latest of the nervous insecurity’s of a leader who has ruled with authoritarian zeal for 27 years but fears time may be running out.
In an interview with the AP on Tuesday night, Tsimanouskaya said officials “made it clear that, upon return home, I would definitely face some form of punishment. There were also thinly disguised hints that more would await me.”
This incident is a good reminder to Americans we are extremely lucky to live in the United States. Our rights are protected by the Constitution to say what we would like and disagree with our leaders without fear of punishment.
As Americans we can peacefully protest any issue we disagree with, freely. There is no fear of the government coming against us for disagreements against them.
As a nation we should look at this situation and cause it to make us stronger as a nation. In a time where the nation is being divided, we must realize we still live in the greatest nation on Earth.
America should be united as a whole. We have been guaranteed freedom by our founding fathers, but we must continue to work for that freedom. We cannot expect to keep our freedoms if we live only for ourselves. We must look at our fellow brothers and sisters and help one another up.
As we continue to struggle from the pandemic, there has never been a better time to draw closer as a nation.
If history repeats itself, America will come out stronger than it was at the beginning of the pandemic. When lookin at events such as Pearl Harbor and the attacks on 9/11, Americans have always put aside their differences to make a change and come back better.
“We have the power to make this the best generation of mankind in the history of the world or make it the last”- John F. Kennedy.
