A dissident on trial in Belarus for his involvement in protests against the regime stabbed himself in the throat while in court on Tuesday, saying he feared retribution against his friends and family unless he pleaded guilty, Belarusian outlet Narodnya Naviny Vitsebska reported.
Video footage does not show dissident Stepan Latypov stab himself but depicts the immediate aftermath of the act in which authorities escort him out of the building on a stretcher and load him into an emergency vehicle. Latypov had fallen unconscious due to the self-inflicted injuries.
Warning: Graphic Footage
Immediately prior to stabbing himself, Latypov reportedly announced he had been warned to plead guilty to keep his family and neighbors safe from legal harassment.
Authorities detained Latypov on September 15, 2020, for protecting an opposition mural during the mass protests against Belarus’s presidential election in which incumbent President Alexander Lukashenko claimed to have won by a landslide with 80 percent of the vote. Opponents of the nation’s first and only president since 1994 asserted the vote tallies were rigged and organized mass demonstrations for weeks on end, demanding Lukashenko resign.
Latypov’s arrest came as part of a government crackdown against the demonstrators. The Belarusian authorities accused him of distributing poisons to kill police as part of the demonstrations, Narodnya Naviny Vitsebska, a Belarusian online news outlet, reported.
Latypov is a professional tree surgeon which requires him to regularly deal in toxic chemicals.
Lukashenko’s regime has gone to extreme lengths to silence dissidents and remain in power. In May, Minsk diverted a Ryanair flight bound for Lithuania under the premise of a bomb threat, only to detain one of the passengers, a prominent opposition journalist, in what European officials called a “state-sponsored hijacking.” Roman Protasevich, the detained journalist, emerged days later in a filmed “confession” video in which he admitted to his involvement in organizing protests in Minsk.
“The attitude of employees towards me is as correct as possible and according to the law. I continue cooperating with investigators and am confessing to having organized mass unrest in the city of Minsk,” he said.
Belarus’s crackdown has triggered stern criticism from western European nations and the European Union (EU).
The flight diversion prompted a round of sanctions from the bloc which included a ban on Belarusian flights using EU airports.
Lukashenko’s regime has traditionally enjoyed strong support from Russian President Vladimir Putin. In April, the Russians claimed to have foiled a coup against his regime.
In an address to the Russian Parliament in April, Putin warned western powers not to cross Russia’s “red lines” while insinuating that any action against Lukashenko would constitute such a violation.
In November 2020, months after the contentious election, Lukashenko, the only president in the history of Belarus, made vague promises of constitutional reform, Insisting that the new constitution, for which he set no concrete timetable, would mark the end of his official tenure.
Ironically, Lukashenko criticized the country’s current document for investing too much power in the presidency.
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