Belarus Olympic sprinter Krystina Timanovskaya has reportedly sought asylum in Poland after claiming she’d successfully evaded being forced to fly home early for criticising the national team’s coaches.
According to the BBC, she spent the night secured in a hotel under protection from Japanese police after saying she had been forcibly taken to the airport.
Timanovskaya, 24, was pictured entering the Polish embassy in Tokyo yesterday after arriving in an unmarked silver van. An opposition group which helps athletes in Belarus told the BBC that Timanovskaya was seeking asylum in Poland.
Marcin Przydacz, an official at the Polish foreign ministry, said that Timanovskaya had been ‘offered a humanitarian visa’.
The sprinter, who was due to compete in the women’s 200m event yesterday, had complained on social media about being entered into the 4x400m relay race at short notice after some teammates were found to be ineligible to compete.
The video led to criticism in state media, with one television channel saying she lacked ‘team spirit’.
The Belarusian Olympic committee said Timanovskaya had been taken off the team because of her ‘emotional and psychological condition’.
Heather McGill, Amnesty International’s Eastern Europe and Central Asia researcher, said the country’s sporting administration had been subject to ‘direct government control’ under President Alexander Lukashenko, who has been in power since 2004.
‘Athletes are favoured by the state and honoured by society, and it is not surprising that athletes who speak out find themselves a target for reprisals,’ she said.
The BBC notes that the country’s security forces have carried out a brutal crackdown on dissent, and that national-level athletes who had joined anti-Lukashenko demonstrations had been stripped of funding, cut from national teams and detained.