Opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya believes that the parliamentary elections in Belarus on Sunday will have nothing to do with democracy.
"It is a farce, it is a show, it is a circus, but it is not an election," she said on Thursday at a meeting with representatives of member states of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) in Vienna.
Under Belarus' long-time ruler Alexander Lukashenko, political opponents have ended up in prison or fled abroad, said the exiled political activist.
The vote, which is taking place in an atmosphere of fear and lack of freedom, only served to confirm Lukashenko's power, she said.
With regard to the death of Russian Kremlin opponent Alexei Navalny, Tsikhanouskaya called for more decisive international reactions to the deaths of political prisoners in Belarus and Russia.
"I feel that dictators are testing their limits, how far they can go without consequences," the former presidential candidate said.
The Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) pointed out this week that dozens of activists and journalists have been repeatedly detained in Belarus since 2020.
Hundreds of civil society organizations have been shut down by order of the authorities or following raids and thousands of people have fled the country for political reasons, it said.
The government in Minsk has not invited any OSCE election observers to oversee Sunday's vote.
Lukashenko has ruled Belarus since 1994. When he sought re-election as president for the sixth time in 2020, the opposition was convinced that his challenger Tsikhanouskaya won.
Lukashenko declared the winner and ordered the subsequent protests to be brutally crushed. Tsikhanouskaya's husband was sentenced to 18 years in prison in 2021.
