In an exclusive interview with the BBC, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, among other issues, discussed the challenges that political prisoners face in Belarus.
📌 “The regime wants to persuade our heroes behind bars that the world has forgotten about them, that nobody’s thinking about them. ‘Just look, the lawyer is not coming, letters are not delivered – your sacrifice was in vain’. And I really want the world to be loud about political prisoners, about the humanitarian situation in Belarus for people not to feel forgotten in our country”.
📌 “We have thousands of political prisoners behind bars, and it’s the most painful part of our fight that thousands of people are suffering behind bars because of ill-treatment. We have a list of people with bad diseases like cancer, diabetes, and heart attacks, and people with special needs who are deprived of any medical care. We had to learn one term, it’s incommunicado mode. It means that people who are behind bars are kept in full isolation. This is about my husband as well. No information at all. The lawyer is not allowed to visit him. Letters are not delivered. I don’t know what to answer to my children about their daddy. And there are plenty of people who are kept like this”.
📌 “We are against the war in Ukraine and against the participation of our country in the war. We want a free, independent, and democratic Belarus through free and fair elections. We want to release our people from prisons, return to our homeland, and start developing our country as part of the European family of countries. So it’s not difficult to unite people who have the same aim. Now it’s not time for competition between people. It’s time to fight against one enemy. It’s the dictator and the system that the dictator has built for 26 years”.
📌 “In Ukraine, Russia’s fighting with tanks and missiles, they’re killing people. In Belarus, it’s like creeping occupation. They interfere with our culture, media, economy, and education, just to step-by-step subjugate our nation. And only a strong national identity and a strong society will help us to avoid this Russification”.
