Nobel laureate Alexievich denounces Belarus 'terror' as another activist is detained

Nobel prize-winning author Svetlana Alexievich accused the Belarus authorities of terrorising their own people on Wednesday as another opposition politician was detained by masked men in plain clothes.

Maxim Znak was the latest figure to be seized in a systematic campaign by the government of President Alexander Lukashenko to round up the leaders of a month-long mass protest movement.

“What is happening is terror against the people,” said Alexievich, who summoned supporters to her home after being harassed by repeated phone calls from unknown numbers and constant ringing by strangers at her door.

“We have to unite and not give up our intentions. There is a danger we will lose the country,” she said.

Znak was detained two days after another opposition leader, Maria Kolesnikova, was snatched in the street by masked men. Both are prominent leaders of protests demanding the resignation of Lukashenko following an Aug. 9 presidential election that the opposition says was rigged. Lukashenko denies vote-rigging.

Znak was the last member of the opposition’s Coordination Council still active inside Belarus apart from Alexievich, who has served as a figurehead for the movement.

All the rest have fled, been forced abroad or been detained in a crackdown by Lukashenko’s security forces as he seeks to maintain his 26-year grip on power in the former Soviet republic.

“First, the country was kidnapped from us, (now) the best of us are being kidnapped. But instead of those torn from our ranks, hundreds of others will come,” Alexievich, winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize for Literature, said in a separate statement.