We interviewed Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, leader of the Belarusian opposition and recognized as President-elect in the elections held in her country in 2020, the day before she left for the NATO summit held on 9-11 July in Washington in the United States.
In the interview we tried to take stock of the situation in her country and what European countries are doing for Belarus. How important a democratic and independent Belarus is in today context. War in Ukraine, Lukashenko increasingly dominated by Putin, Lukashenko hosting Chinese armed forces and nuclear weapons deployed on the borders of NATO countries: primarily Lithuania and Poland.
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THE PROTESTS
A long battle for freedom began long before 2020 in Belarus, when following fraudulent election the dictator Lukashenko won his sixth mandate.
For those elections, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya took on the leadership of the opposition movement and presented herself as a candidate for president after the arrest of her husband: Siarhei Tsikhanousky.
He should have been the candidate, but Lukashenko ended his presidential run with his arrest. He was aware that he would be a dangerous opponent.
According to independent observers and experts, those elections were won by Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, but Lukashenko and his entourage made sure that the result was in their favor. Street protests began to spread across Belarus. Hundreds of thousands of citizens of all ages protested en masse as never before.
The participation was massive, but the repression by the police and KGB agents was also violent. What the country’s security and intelligence agency is still called. Legacies of the Soviet period.
Arrests, beatings, torture, killings are the specialty of the Belarusian KGB. Worthy heir to the Soviet one.
The eyes of the world were on Belarus, but the protests were repressed. Many dissidents were arrested, many managed to escape.
Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, together with her children, managed to request asylum in Lithuania. She has since lived in Vilnius and created a transitional political cabinet with which she promotes the Belarus cause in the world and helps her people in exile. In addition to continuing the battle against Lukashenko’s regime.
EXILE AND POLITICAL PRISONERS
After the 2020 protests, the regime’s wave of repression was unleashed against all those who not only protested, but also who were speaking the Belarusian language, rather than the Russian one, in public.
According to estimates from Tsikhanouskaya’s office, after 2020 at least five hundred thousand to one million people left the country out of a total population of around nine and a half million. Most of the exiles requested asylum in Poland. Lithuania welcomed sixty-two thousand. Italy about ten thousand.
Human rights organizations believe that there are currently fifteen hundred political prisoners in Belarus. In itself, says Sviatlana “It’s just a number, but behind every number there are people’s lives and thousands of families divided, thousands of children growing up without their mother, father and sometimes both. Fifteen hundred political prisoners mean people who are tortured in prisons, people who are dying slowly”.
Political prisoners are held in complete isolation. Nobody can communicate with them. Sviatlana, like others, has not heard from her husband for over a year. No phone calls. The relatives of the prisoners cannot go to visit them, also because many would risk arrest, they cannot call, and the regime does not give out any news. Will they be alive, sick, dead…?
NATO SUMMIT
In the last four years Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya has visited all the countries of the democratic world: from the USA to the European Union, from Australia to Canada.
The NATO summit that has just ended could not be missed (the last one was held in Vilnius). We asked her for comment.
Although the press gave little attention to the news, Belarus is also included in the official summit statement. “…I am glad that NATO countries agreed to support Ukraine because the fates of Belarus and Ukraine are intertwined. We are just beginning our cooperation with the Alliance and want Belarus to be seen not only as a threat but also as a partner…”.
“During the summit I had the opportunity to meet ministers, officials and experts from different countries. We mainly discussed how to help Ukraine, how to make sanctions against Lukashenko effective and how to support the democratic movement in Belarus. We also talked about countering propaganda, both Russian and Lukashenko’s”.
Tsikhanouskaya, in our interview, reiterates the importance of a democratic and independent Belarus for the stability of all Europe. “…If in Ukraine Putin fights with missiles and tanks and continues a horrible war, in Belarus there is a creeping occupation. In Belarus, the Kremlin is destroying national identity, tying the Belarusian economy to Russia and doing everything to consolidate its control over the country”.
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