Belarusian opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanouskaya said on Tuesday she had fled abroad for the sake of her children after strongman leader Alexander Lukashenko’s claim of victory in Sunday’s presidential election prompted bloody street protests. At least one person died during two nights of clashes between security forces and opposition supporters who accuse Lukashenko, in power since 1994, of rigging his re-election. Western nations have also branded the vote as unfair and unfree. Belarus’s interior ministry said more than 2,000 people had been detained after the clashes on Monday night, in which it said 21 police and security service personnel had been injured, with five taken to hospital. Tikhanouskaya, a 37-year-old former English teacher who took her husband’s place on the ballot after he was jailed, fled to neighbouring Lithuania from where she urged her compatriots not to oppose the police and to avoid putting their lives in danger. “You know, I thought that this whole campaign had really toughened me up and given me so much strength that I could handle anything,” she said in an emotional video. “But, probably, I’m still the weak woman I was in the first place. I have made a very difficult decision for myself,” she said, adding that the political tumult in Belarus was not worth anyone losing their life for.