A Belarus court opened on Tuesday a trial in absentia of the country’s leading opposition politicians, including Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who fled the country after she challenged the country’s long-time autocratic president Aleksandr Lukashenko at the 2020 elections.

It has never been more dangerous to be a journalist in Belarus, where President Alexander Lukashenko’s regime is trying to silence and suppress the independent media, reporters said at an online press conference in Minsk on Tuesday.