Lithuanian citizen beaten in Minsk turns to police in Vilnius over regime violence
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Alexander Lukashenko and OMON police forces. / AP
Maria Matusevich, a Lithuanian citizen of Belarusian descent, has turned to the Lithuanian Criminal Police Bureau after being beaten by the Belarusian security forces in Minsk. The questioning took a long [time]. She told everything. Her story is interesting, Alexander Dobrovoslky, representing the headquarters of Svetlana Tikhanovskaya in Vilnius, told BNS.
This marks the second time when a person has turned to the Lithuanian law enforcement over violence at the hands of Belarusian security forces.
In December, Lithuania s Prosecutor General s Office launched a pre-trial investigation into crimes against humanity in response to a request from Belarusian citizen Maxim Khoroshin.
Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the exiled leader of the Belarusian opposition, has called on European countries to follow Lithuania in investigating crimes committed by the regime in Belarus.
“We encourage all other countries to follow this initiative of the Lithuanian prosecutor and start investigating crimes against humanity of the regime,” Tikhanovskaya told the Baltic News Service. “Not a single case should be forgotten and every case should be investigated,” she added.
On Wednesday, Lithuanian prosecutors launched a pre-trial investigation into crimes against humanity allegedly committed by the Belarus police for severely beating and intimidating Belarusian citizen Maxim Khoroshin who fled to Vilnius and turned to prosecutors on 30 November.