MINSK

Veteran Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko is under increasingly intense international pressure after the defection of an Olympic athlete and the death of a young opposition activist, found hanged in a park in neighbouring Ukraine, ordered the closure of “every metre” of the country’s borders to guard against what he said were threats from neighbouring states and an influx of migrants.

The latest scandals are compounded by Western sanctions certain to hurt the country’s already stumbling economy. They involve one of the country’s Olympic medal hopefuls, Krystina Timanovskaya, now in Poland after refusing to be sent home under duress, and an opposition activist found hanged in a park in Kyiv, where he ran an institution helping Belarusians who had fled government crackdown in their homeland.

The incident in Ukraine underscored the reality that opposition activists can no longer consider themselves safe wherever they are.

Lukashenko’s actions and behaviour have become increasingly rash and erratic since last year’s mass demonstrations protesting against what opponents say was his fraudulent re-election to a sixth term in office. Western punitive measures, now aimed at the Belarusian economy, were quickly introduced after Lukashenko diverted a scheduled flight to Minsk and arrested a dissident journalist on board.

Addressing senior security officials on Thursday, the president said the border had to be closed immediately to fend off all threats from outside.

“From today, not a single person must cross into Belarusian territory from a neighbouring state, be it from the south or west,” television footage showed him saying to officials in military-style uniforms.

“How you are going to do this will be discussed after this meeting … Close every metre of the border…Our people must feel assured, they must know that there are guys able to defend them. We must do this, purely and simply.”

Lukashenko said neighbouring countries had allowed large numbers of illegal migrants to arrive in Belarus as part of their plans for destabilisation.

“You know the consequences and so do they,” he said. “Let them think about it. They have been warned.”

BUILDUP OF ILLEGAL MIGRANTS

But the European Union blames Belarus for the buildup of illegal immigrants on its border with Lithuania by allowing large planeloads of them to fly into Minsk — as part of his response to the EU sanctions in June, Lukashenko halted all cooperation with the bloc on managing and reducing the flow of illegal immigrants into the bloc.

In Brussels, the EU summoned Belarus’s top diplomat in the Belgian capital and talked to Iraqi officials about suspending that country’s flights to Minsk amid accusations that Belarus has “weaponised” migrants to create problems at the bloc’s eastern border.

“These practices must stop and Belarus must respect its international commitments in combating irregular migration and human trafficking and migrant smuggling,” a spokesman for the EU’s Executive Commission was quoted as saying.

Lukashenko, in power since 1994,  has been particularly scathing about Ukraine’s very public drive to join Western institutions, including NATO, as part of its efforts to end a seven-year-old war against armed Russian proxies who occupied large swathes of Ukraine.

Sprinter Timanovskaya defied an order from her Belarus sport managers – and then sought political asylum rather than be sent home from Tokyo in disgrace. She flew to Poland — which offered her a humanitarian visa — as did her husband, in a step right out of a Cold War movie, effectively a defection, when Soviet athletes or performers frequently slipped away to the West.

On Thursday, she addressed journalists in the Polish capital, saying she hoped to be able to return to Belarus once it was safe to do so.

“I did not betray it. It is my homeland,” she said.

SPORT AND POLITICS

Timanovskaya, 24, has steered clear of politics and focused her criticisms of Belarus exclusively on sports issues.

She stated she has never met Lukashenko and had nothing to say about him. But “terrible” things had been happening in Belarus, she added.

Commentators and political activists in Minsk blamed Lukashenko for the turmoil around the distraught athlete.

Days earlier, Lukashenko had berated athletes and sports officials for poor performances in Japan, saying they lacked drive and were not “hungry” enough.

Belarusian athletes have so far won three medals in Tokyo — including gold in trampoline gymnastics. Lukashenko congratulated the medallists but has made no mention of Timanovskaya.

Belarussian opposition activist Vitaly Shishov, 26, disappeared in Kyiv after going for his daily run. He was head of the “Belarus House” in Ukraine, which offered help for those fleeing Belarus with housing and legal advice. Ukrainian police opened a murder investigation.

Lukashenko is accused of engineering a brutal crackdown against protesters who took part in last year’s mass protests. More than 30,000 people were jailed — most for short periods of time. There have been widespread reports of beatings and torture.

According to Timanovskaya’s account, she objected to a demand to take part in a relay competition in addition to her usual individual events – after other Belarusian competitors were prevented from taking part because of failing to comply with doping regulations.

After she refused, officials said she was being sent home because doctors had expressed concern for her mental state – suggestions she denied as no doctor had examined her. It was at Tokyo’s Haneda airport that she approached Japanese police and said she wanted to seek political asylum.

Sports commentator Dmitry Navosha said that Timanovskaya had taken “absolutely the right decision.”

“Television viewers might well ask, how could an Olympic athlete be put in jail? But just look at what has happened in the past year,” he told Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty’s Current Time programme, listing a number of athletes who had been detained or punished for joining protests against the president. “They were part of the repression, including time in prison…She (Timanovskaya) is under a very serious threat…She has basically been declared an enemy of the state for comments that were in no way political, merely standing up for her rights.”

Earlier in the week, Navosha had said that Western sanctions slapped on Belarus were affecting sport and other sectors of the economy prompting hundreds of thousands of people in the electronic, IT and other sectors to leave the country or consider leaving.

The latest EU sanctions were aimed at Belarus’s economy, particularly restrictions on shipments of its main export – potash, a key element in fertiliser, of which Belarus exports 20 percent of the world supply.

But the EU proceeded carefully and gradually with the punitive measures – probably to guard against boosting the export potential of Russia, another major supplier of potash.

Lukashenko had until last year’s mass election protests walked a fine line between East and West in seeking to maintain his stay in power. The crackdown and the furore over the diverted Ryanair aircraft have obliged him to move closer to Russia, his sole economic – and possibly military – ally.

He has since the mid-1990s promoted an idea of a joint “union state” with Russia but has resisted Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin’s attempt to impose a quick merger which could well mean the simple absorption of his country of 9 million. He has in recent months stressed the country’s “sovereignty”.