Dear Chairman,
Dear members of the Assembly,
Dear friends,
Thank you, dear Michal, for your kind words. And for your dedicated long-lasting support for democratic Belarus. Congratulations on your new role. NATO PA is lucky to have such a leader as you.
I want to thank the honourable jury for giving me this important award, and the Iceland delegation, and personally Njall Trausti Fridberstsson, for nominating me.
I’m the second woman from a non-NATO country to receive this award. I regard your decision as a sign of special attention that the Parliament Assembly pays to Belarus.
Three years since the beginning of the Belarusian peaceful revolution, it’s getting harder to keep Belarus high on the agenda. Contrary to the name and the idea of this award, we live in a world full of wars and insecurity.
Tyrannys all around the world never stop looking for ways to undermine democratic societies. To deprive people everywhere of their rights and voices, to make them just a servile, hard-working mass – this is the dream of every tyrant.
Tyrants are like terrorists in many ways. They hold whole populations hostage. They are never satisfied with what you give them. If you show weakness and give them what they want, they will always want more. Tyranny is like cancer: if not treated properly, it will grow and affect whole regions, country after country.
Accepting this award today, I can’t help thinking of Israeli men and women, taken hostage by terrorists these days. I really hope that all the prisoners, civilians and servicemen alike, will return home safely.
We Belarusians pray for peace in Israel. For hundreds of years, the Jewish people used to call Belarus their home. We Belarusians have very special ties with them. But Belarus also used to be home for Muslims, namely Tatars. We used to live in peace in Belarus for centuries all together: Christians, Jews, and Muslims.
I believe that it can also be real today. May peace be restored in the Middle East as soon as possible.
Dear friends,
Let me gratefully accept this award in the name of all our Belarusian heroines – first of all, our women political prisoners. Among thousands of political prisoners in Belarus, there are hundreds of women. They are hostages of the terrorist regime in Lukashenka’s quiet war against our people.
Maryia Kalesnikava, Katsiaryna Andreeva, Nasta Loika, Marfa Rabkova, Volha Mayorava, Darya Losik, Volha Zalatar, Kseniya Lutskina and hundreds others. All these women could continue contributing to our Belarusian society with their talents and intelligence. Instead, they were taken away from their beloved and sentenced to large prison terms, up to 20 years, based on trumped-up charges.
It is not by chance that the Nobel Peace prize this year was given to another brave woman, jailed by a dictatorship – Narges Mohammadi from Iran. Among other things, Narges is fighting against use of solitary confinement as a “cruel and inhumane punishment” in Iranian prisons.
In Belarus, it is the most common way of torturing women and men alike. The women that I mentioned are held in solitary confinement for many months. They are kept incommunicado, even their lawyers are not allowed to see them. Some of them badly need medical assistance which they are denied.
These women are treated like criminals by the regime which, assisted by Russia, terrorises the Belarusian people. Which makes use of terrorist groups like Wagner mercenaries or its own GUBOPIK thugs. The regime, which is guilty of acts of international terrorism, such as hijacking the Ryanair plane in 2021. Which commits war crimes, such as illegal deportation of Ukrainian children from occupied territories.
The quiet war of this regime against the Belarusian people has been going on for three years. One of our most defiant political prisoners, mother of two children, Palina Sharenda-Panasiuk, considers herself a prisoner of war. And indeed, she’s treated by her jailers like an enemy.
Just last year, she spent more than 200 days in isolation, in the punishment cell. She was beaten, and her ribs were broken. She is denied treatment and medication for her liver condition. They are literally killing her. With a height of 170 cm, Palina now weighs only 47 kg. Now, they want to sentence Palina to a new prison term for the third time in a row.
But neither torture, imprisonment, nor an attempt to put her in a mental ward have broken her.
I dedicate this award to Palina and many other women like her.
Like Iranians, we Belarusians also have a Nobel Peace Prize winner in jail. I’m talking about Ales Bialiatski, the two times political prisoner of the regime. He is sentenced to 10 years in prison for his human rights activism.
Today, I’d like to greet his wife and my friend Natallia Pinchuk: Natallia, it’s your award, too. For many years, ever since Ales’s participation in the dissident movement in Soviet times, Natallia stood by his side, taking care of him and their son Adam. She was visiting Ales in jail while it was possible. Now, she’s waiting for him to come home.
Being a political prisoner’s wife myself, I know very well what it feels like. When you can’t recognize your husband on a video from prison, because you haven’t seen him for years. When they send you a text message with fake news that your husband is dead, trying to break you.
There are thousands of women like us in Belarus. And it is their award, too.
And there are still many more women, hundreds of thousands of them, who voted for me. Who believe in our victory and who give me strength to go on with my mission.
Women like the pensioner who called me recently. She told me that she and her female friends hold regular gatherings, where they discuss politics and support each other. “Aren’t you afraid?”, I asked her. “We’re simply tired of being afraid,” she told me. “There are too many of us. They just can’t arrest everyone.”
It is to women like her that I would like to dedicate this award.
Dear friends,
Being raised in the patriarchal Soviet and post-Soviet society, I was taught to put up with many injustices and to give up in many situations. “You’re a woman, you can’t change anything. The world is a cruel place. It is a man’s world.”
With time, I had to learn by myself that it’s not true. Today I know for sure: we women can bring about change. We do have the power to make the world a better place.
Two years ago I was lucky to meet one of my heroines, Madeleine Albright. She said a beautiful phrase that I’d like to quote: “I was taught to strive not because there were any guarantees of success, but because the act of striving is in itself the only way to keep faith with life.”
It reminded me at once of my own experience. For years, I was trying to rehabilitate my hearing-impaired son. There was no guarantee that rehabilitation would help him. But there was no other choice: we had to keep on trying, just to “keep faith with life”.
There is another famous quote of Madeleine’s, which I like very much: “There is a special place in hell for women who don't help other women.” And I can affirm that she was true to this ideal of female solidarity. It was actually her who advised president Joe Biden to meet me, when I came for the first time to Washington D.C.
Thinking of Madeleine Albright, I realise her role in shaping international security. She saw NATO not just as a military alliance but as a pillar of international stability and an engine of democratic progress.
There can’t be security without democracy. Therefore, a democratic Belarus is a must. Ukraine – and actually – whole Europe – will never be safe, if Belarus remains in Russian claws. To support Belarusian resistance is of key importance.
Today, the very existence of Belarus is at stake. Putin doesn’t see either Belarus or Ukraine as independent states. His aim is to subjugate and colonize. In Ukraine, Russia does it with tanks and missiles. In Belarus, it does it through political and economical domination, and russification.
The fates of Belarus and Ukraine are intertwined. Without Belarus, Russia’s war against Ukraine becomes pointless. If our revolution succeeded in 2020, the war would probably never have started. This is why Putin holds his grip on Belarus so strongly, and this is why Putin supports Lukashenka so much.
Today our resistance went underground. But it’s not “sleeping”. People keep the spirit alive. In spite of police terror, they continue to gather illegally. Only last year, there were at least 375 acts of peaceful protest in Belarus. Last week, Belarusian railway partisans have blown up the railway track section, used by the Russian military.
The Belarusian society hasn’t changed its opinions since 2020. Despite all the propaganda, police terror, presence of the Russian troops. Belarusians prepare for a new window of opportunity.
Belarus can be a success story. But we have to give people hope. Such hope is a European perspective for Belarus as an alternative to the “Russian World”. In August, we, Belarusian democratic forces, declared that our ultimate goal for Belarus is membership in the European Union. But Belarusians also want to hear from you that Europe's door is open to Belarus, and it will not be given as a consolation prize to Putin.
Dear Parliamentarians,
I ask you to support our movement for freedom. Join the Groups for democratic Belarus in your parliaments. Become godparents for political prisoners. Also, as parliamentarians, you can demand more decisive steps from your governments vis-a-vis Belarus. Demand the tribunal not only against Putin, but also Lukashenka. He has a long record of crimes. While increasing sanctions on the regime, increase assistance to democratic forces. Helping Belarusian people to fight is not charity, it’s your investment in the security and democratic future of Europe.
Provide a safe haven to exiled Belarusians in your countries: last month, the regime deprived them of passports. Hundreds of thousands can become de facto stateless. Very soon, we plan to issue our own passports to them, as Baltic states were doing during the Soviet occupation. I ask your parliaments to endorse this initiative.
And finally – let’s help Ukraine to win this war. Victory of Ukraine will be the ultimate defeat of Putin and Lukashenka. Many Belarusians fight for Ukrainian freedom as I speak. Many of them gave their lives in this fight. Because we understand that it’s not just their fight – it’s our common fight for freedom.
We have a long road ahead of us. Let’s walk this road to freedom together. For us, Belarusians, walking this road “is in itself the only way to keep faith with life.”
Thank you very much.
