Belarusian athlete, Kristina Timanovskaya said she was "safe" and under police protection in Japan after claiming her country had forced her to leave the Tokyo Olympics after expressing her personal sentiments. The 24-year-old sprinter said team officials had tried to remove her from Japan after she criticised Belarus's athletics federation for entering her into a relay race in Tokyo without giving her notice."It turns out our great bosses, as always decided everything for us," she had said on her Instagram stories that are no longer available.
The Belarusian Olympic Committee had claimed that Timanovskaya left the Tokyo Games on medical advice because of her "emotional and psychological state". Japan through it's officials said that it is keeping a Belarusian Olympian who took refuge in the Polish embassy “safe” as the International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced a formal investigation into the incident and the United States condemned Belarus’s attempts to send her home as intolerable “transnational repression”.
The sprinter has now been granted a humanitarian visa by Poland. Her supporters say she will fly to Warsaw on Wednesday and that her husband, Arseni Zhdanevich will join her there.
The incident has focused attention on Belarus, where police have cracked down on dissent following a wave of protests triggered by an election last year which the opposition says was rigged to keep President Alexander Lukashenko in power
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