Lithuania grants diplomatic status to Belarusian opposition leader’s office
The Lithuanian authorities have granted the office of the leader of the Belarusian opposition, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, official diplomatic status, announced Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis, handing the policy a note of the Foreign Ministry on accreditation, TASS reports.
"The Belarusian Democratic Representation has been officially accredited in Lithuania," Landsbergis said.
The minister added that this was done at the request of Tikhanovskaya's office.
Landsbergis also stressed that this decision is a continuation of Lithuania’s policy "in support of representatives of the Belarusian people and Tikhanovskaya."
Tikhanovskaya has been in Lithuania since August 2020. She left Belarus immediately after the presidential elections, the results of which she did not recognize.
Earlier, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya was received as president of Belarus in the Czech Republic. The speaker of the Czech Senate said that the elections in Belarus were not free, and the real president is Tikhanovskaya.
Tikhanovskaya called for the creation of an international tribunal to try the self-proclaimed president of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko. According to her, the Belarusian authorities are putting Belarusian’s through "a terror that our country has not seen since Stalin's time."
Belarus asked Lithuania on March 5 for the extradition of Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, prosecuted in her country for her role in the post-election protest movement of 2020. A request that the Lithuanian authorities had firmly rejected. “We have only one thing to say to the Belarusian regime: it will be cold in hell before we examine your requests,” Gabrielius Landsbergis said at the time in a statement.
The Belarusian authorities accuse Svetlana Tikhanovskaya of having organized “mass unrest” last year.