In an exclusive interview with Reuters in Warsaw on Thursday, she said her family feared she would be sent to a psychiatric ward if she went back to Belarus, and that her grandmother had called her to tell her not to return.
"It may sound cruel because of all the terrible things that happened in Belarus last summer but I was trying to keep away from it, but all I have wanted is to go to the Olympics and do my best," she said, referring to protests last year against President Alexander Lukashenko that led to a police crackdown.Lukashenko's spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment after Tsimanouskaya's interview.
"Grandmother called me when they were already driving me to the airport," the athlete said. "Literally, I had some 10 seconds. She called me, all that she told me was: 'Please do not come back to Belarus, it's not safe'." The Belarus National Olympic Committee had said coaches withdrew Tsimanouskaya from the Games on doctors' advice about her emotional and psychological state. It did not immediately respond to requests for additional comment on Thursday.
"They did not expect that in the airport I can approach the police. They think that we are scared to make a move, that we are afraid to speak, afraid to tell the truth to the whole world. But I am not afraid," she said. Opposition figures have been prosecuted, jailed or fled since mass protests against Lukashenko began last year, even before he won a sixth presidential term in an election that observers and critics say was rigged. He denies electoral fraud.
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