A U.S. national is asking for asylum in Belarus. It sounds unbelievable, but this a fact. Evan Newman, one of the protesters in Washington, DC, whom the U.S. government accuses of taking over the Capitol, has illegally crossed the Belarusian border and is seeking protection.
Judging by his story, he is exactly one of ordinary Americans whose stores were burned down by the Black Lives Matter movement, who sought justice, asked inconvenient questions, but lost virtually everything and is being persecuted by the U.S. government.
Evan Newman, U.S. national:
They added my picture to the FBI's most wanted list of criminals, asking for the public's help to identify me. I knew I would be identified immediately. So the first thing I did was to leave my place. I started hiding, traveling across America from one place to another. I hired a lawyer. And the lawyer said I could go to Europe on a business trip. That's why I planned it for my bag company. The lawyer said it was good because it would give me the time. And then it will become clear what is going on. After all, there were no legal proceedings. So, in order to understand what was going on I left.
On August 15, a situation that was hard to imagine happened on the Belarusian-Ukrainian border. The Belarusian border guards detained an illegal alien, who turned out to be a citizen of the United States. And he broke through the deep forests to Belarus in order to find shelter.
Evan Newman is a native Californian, has a high school education and two children. He runs a handbag business. Yet, he is politically active, of course, but not like Edward Snowden. He has no access to state secrets. Yet, something made him flee the land of fabulous freedoms and opportunities.
Evan Newman, U.S. Citizen:
Yes, I'm accused, I believe, of six cases. And I think all of them are criminal offences. A criminal offence is a very serious charge. It means you hurt somebody or something. I don't think I committed any crime, and one of the charges was very insulting. The allegation is that I hit a police officer. This allegation is wholly without merit.
The fateful day for Evan Newman was January 6, 2021, when he took part in protests in Washington, D.C. to challenge the U.S. presidential election results.
Evan Newman, U.S. national:
When I was outside the Capitol, nobody came in through the windows, there were hundreds of people, and after a man broke a window and invited us in, told us to come in, nobody did it. And that's how the government has been creating these situations since the 1990s that they test on us, and call it a terrorist event or something like that.
After leaving the U.S. for Italy in March, Newman took a train to Switzerland. He switched to a car and drove to Germany, then Poland. And by March 13, he arrived in the Ukrainian city of Zhytomyr. He lived in a rented apartment.
After four months of living in Ukraine, the American noticed that he was being followed.
Evan Newman, U.S. national:
I wouldn’t dare ask for asylum until the SBU started following me in Ukraine, two weeks later. It's horrible. This is political persecution, not criminal investigation, but political persecution. And this is a level that I can't do anything about.
