"You did not believe that we would open the borders for you, but we did it and with a sole purpose: you have to leave and never return. Listen to me, do not come back. Take your child, fly to the United Kingdom, claim asylum, and do not return. Nobody needs you here, all you do is spread false information," Aleksandr Kupchenya, head of the corrections department of the Minsk City Police Directorate told Khalip.
Last fall, Khalip's husband, opposition politician Andrei Sannikov,was granted asylum in the U.K. where he travelled following his release from jail. She lives in Minsk with their young son, but is serving a suspended two-year prison sentence on fabricated charges of mass disorder in connection to her reporting on presidential elections. The sentence, imposed in May 2011, requires her to check in weekly with district police and to spend every night in her Minsk apartment.
Khalip has been the target of harassment and threats for some time according to CPJ including finding the severed head of a chicken in an unmarked envelope placed in her mailbox.
