When Belarusian officials tried to muzzle sprinter Krystsina Tsimanouskaya and bundle her on a flight back to Minsk, a special organisation defending Belarusian athletes against repression stepped in to help.
The Belarusian Sport Solidarity Foundation (BSSF) supports players, coaches, and other professionals in sport facing pressure for opposing Alexander Lukashenko, who has held power in Belarus since 1994, or falling victim to his broad, brutal crackdown on dissent.
And while that may seem like a niche calling, in the year since protests began against Lukashenko, more than 120 athletes, coaches and sport professionals have been fired, removed from competition, or otherwise punished because of perceived dissent, the organisation says.
“Sport for Lukashenko is an instrument of propaganda,” said Aliaksandr Apeikin, the executive director of BSSF, who stayed in contact with Tsimanouskaya as her initial conflict with coaches snowballed into a hate campaign that demonised her on state television. “It’s an element of national politics, like in East Germany or the Soviet Union.”
BSSF was founded in 2020 soon after more than 250 athletes signed an open letter condemning fraud in the elections that delivered Lukashenko his sixth term in office and the excessive violence, including torture, levelled at Belarusians protesting against the official results.
As the number of signatories has ballooned to more than 2,000, more athletes have been purged for voicing their dissent.
“When athletes began participating in the protests, [Lukashenko] got very scared,” said Apeikin, noting their influence as public figures.
An influential figure among them was Aleksandra Herasimenia, a former Olympic swimmer who chairs the group. In an interview, she said that a key message of the group was that “athletes are not slaves. They have the right to have their own point of view and position … Sport is part of politics. It has always been part of politics.”
The three-time Olympic medalist has had to leave Belarus with her family and has been targeted with criminal charges because of her opposition to the government.
But she says that the positive responses have outweighed the negative. “For my whole athletic career, I had not gotten so many positive responses as when I spoke out about my position and, so to say, joined the people,” she said.
The organisation provides legal and financial aid to athletes, outreach to governing bodies such as the IOC, and has also sought to prevent Lukashenko’s efforts at sportwashing his reputation by attracting large events to the country. The organisation is also launching a freedom marathon on Saturday in support of the more than 35,000 Belarusians who have been jailed since the protests began in 2020.
Among its biggest successes have been lobbying for sanctions against the Belarusian National Olympic Committee and helping to convince the International Ice Hockey Federation to strip Belarus of the 2021 Ice Hockey world championships.
“Holding the championship would have allowed Lukashenko to legitimise himself,” said Apeikin. “We could not allow that to happen.”
Athletes are vulnerable because sport and politics are closely linked in Belarus, where many of the clubs and teams are run or funded by the state. Lukashenko personally headed the National Olympic Committee for decades before passing the role on to his son, Viktor. Both have been banned from Olympic events by the IOC in response to the crackdown on dissent in Belarus.
Sport “is a big toy for Lukashenko’s private propaganda”, said Yelena Leuchanka, a centre for the Athens-based Panathinaikos basketball team.
Meanwhile, athletes “can lose everything” for speaking out on social media or in interviews, the two-time Olympian added.
Recalling a US television pundit’s demand that LeBron James “shut up and dribble”, she said: “It’s the same thing but 100 times worse … think about how hard it is for athletes to be in a country like that with that kind of propaganda.”
Leuchanka was arrested for 15 days last September after she joined the peaceful protests against the Belarus government and signed a letter condemning Lukashenko.
She has described flea-ridden conditions in Minsk’s notorious Akrestina prison, where she and fellow inmates were crowded into cells with no mattresses and backed-up toilets.
But she said she had no regrets about speaking out about the government, saying that “somebody has to be first to take the step so that in the future we can change things for the better”.
And as athletes spoke up, it was important to have an independent organisation, like a player’s association, that could “protect the athletes at all cost”.
“As we’re playing such an important role in society, we deserve to have our voices heard,” she said. “We’re changing athletics. And we’re changing athletes.”
Participation in the group has cost many of those involved dearly. Asked how it had affected his life, Apeikin said: “Well, I have a criminal case opened against me. I can’t be in the country. That’s how it’s affected my life.” He and Herasimenia have been accused of trying to seize power from the government. As to threats to the safety of the group’s members, he says: “We shouldn’t get comfortable. We need to maintain some safety measures.”
But most of those who have gone public with their dissent have stood by their words. In a press conference on Wednesday, Tsimanouskaya told Belarusians “not to be afraid and, if they’re under pressure, speak out”.
“I did what felt right in my heart and I felt free,” said Leuchenka. “When I spoke my truth, after jail, it was just a confirmation that we are on the right path.”