Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya gave speech for Words Matter Conference in Oslo:
“Dear Chairman Finn-Jarle Rode,
Dear Jacqui Thornton,
Dear friends,
Words matter. I couldn’t agree more with the title of this conference.
Words really do matter. Words can break through walls, bring down tyrants, and transform our world. But words also have the power to hurt, create hate, justify terror, and spread lies.
Living in a dictatorship is like living in lies. They lie to you at school. They lie to you in government. They lie on TV.
They lie to you that we live in the best, the most peaceful, stable and free country in the world… even though your best friends are in prison, and your grandmother barely has enough money to live on.
After some time, you can’t distinguish truth from lies. And when you start asking questions, they threaten you, throw you in jail, and denounce you as an enemy of the state…
Dictators come up with labels for anyone who refuses to live by their rules in their lies. They call political opponents terrorists. Neighboring countries – fascists. Journalists – bugs and prostitutes. Human rights defenders – extremists. And those who flee from political persecution are fugitives.
For the Belarus dictator, I am a terrorist, an extremist, who tried to seize power. But four years ago, I was just an ordinary housewife raising two wonderful kids, and I had no interest in politics.
I was sentenced to 15 years in prison just because I decided to support my husband, Siarhei Tsikhanouski.
It was he who refused to live in lies. He launched his blog on YouTube, traveling across the country and telling the truth about the problems of people – poverty, corruption, injustice.
He was telling the truth about the dictatorship that dominated our country for 26 years. At some point, he decided to challenge the dictator. Immediately, he was put in prison.
To support my husband, I decided to put my name on the ballot for president. The dictator registered me as a joke. ‘No one will ever vote for a woman’, He said. But people voted for me. People voted for truth.
Obviously, the dictator refused to accept the result, and hundreds of thousands took to the streets.
It was the moment of the awakening of the entire nation. Belarusians refused to live in lies. Belarusians realized their power. And realized that we don’t need bosses to decide what we must do and how we must think.
It is such a relief when you can openly say that white is white, and black is black. Belarus is Europe, not Russia. And Lukashenka is a dictator, not a President.
It’s such a privilege to call things by their names. When you live in a democracy, you don’t feel it. Because freedom of speech is like air. And only when you lose it – you suffocate.
Dictators like to change words and meanings. They like to call things what they are not. For example, the words ‘parliamentary elections’.
In democracies and dictatorships, they mean opposite things. In democracies, this is when people choose their representatives.
But in dictatorships, this is just a ritual, a process of appointing officials who do not decide anything, but simply raise their hands when they are told.
Or take the Russian war against Ukraine. They don’t call it a war. They called it denazification, military, or even a peacemaking operation. Dictators hope that behind their lies, they can hide the truth and evade responsibility for their crimes.
Therefore, the words we choose do matter, and matter a lot. Language shapes reality. And we must be brave enough to call a spade a spade.
Dictators around the world are learning from each other. They are banding together. They are trying to destroy the truth with the help of repression, with the help of fear, and with the help of technology.
Dictators effectively spread propaganda through the Internet and social networks – which were created to serve freedom of speech and democracy. Through the internet, dictators learned to trace opponents and spread fear.
In Belarus, when the KGB arrests an activist or journalist, it puts him or her, beaten or tortured, before the camera. And records a so-called “confessional” video where people confess crimes they never committed. Then, they put this video on YouTube and advertise it.
In the hands of dictators, media became a weapon to seed terror. Therefore, when we speak about fighting tyrannies around the world, it’s so crucial to have technology companies on our side so they serve the truth, not dictators with their hate and lies.
Dear friends,
As we speak, there are thousands of political prisoners. Among them are journalists and bloggers, students and pensioners. Even Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ales Bialiatski, a writer and human rights defender. All of them are different people, but united by one thing: they decided to live in truth.
Among them is also my husband. My children, whom I now only see at weekends, ask me when their Dad will come home. I still don’t know how to explain that their dad has been sentenced to 18 years in prison.
I don’t want them to forget his voice and face, so sometimes we watch his YouTube channel, where everything started.
I have not heard anything about him for more than a year, and I don’t know if he is alive.
But I am glad that the work he started continues. I am glad that the revolution, primarily in the minds of people, that started four years ago is still going on.
When people choose once to live in the truth, you can never change them back. And it gives me hope, optimism, and confidence that we will win.
To win this fight, we need allies, and I know that many of them are in this room.
I ask you to be the voice of the voiceless. Speak for those who can not. Tell their stories, and be their advocates here in Norway and in the international arena. Support those who fight for freedom and who suffer for truth.
Stand with Belarus and Ukraine. Both of our nations are fighting for very values that the democratic world holds so dearly. The fight for freedom is a global one. And no one is free until all are free.
There should be no place for hate in our world. We must act against all tyrants who are using hate and fear to divide us.
And the words I want to leave you with are words of gratitude. Because it is not only what we say but also what we do that matters. And each of us can make a difference in our actions.
Thank you for standing with us!”
