'We’re looking for powerful friends': Exiled Belarussian leader calls for Irish solidarity

Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya receives the Tipperary International Peace Award from Martin Quinn, Hon. Secretary, with committee members Guy Jones and John Shanahan.

Exiled Belarussian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who has fought for democracy since her husband was jailed for political dissent, called for Irish solidarity against tyranny in her country.

She was in Ireland to accept the Tipperary International Peace Award on Tuesday, which has previously been awarded to other world-changing thought-leaders, including Nelson Mandela and Malala Yousafzai.

Belarus has become an Orwellian nightmare where an oppressive dictatorship will prosecute the crime of thought, she said.

She has not been permitted to speak to her husband since he was jailed in 2020 and she fled Belarus for Lithuania with their two children.

Deep links with Ireland

Ms Tsikhanouskaya has deep links with Ireland, having spent time in Roscrea with the Chernobyl Children’s Project as a child. Ireland, she says, is her second home.

She was thrust onto the international stage when her husband, Sergei Tsikhanousky, was arrested and imprisoned after he announced his intention to contest the 2020 election against ruling dictator, Alexander Lukashenko.

To support my husband, I ran as a [presidential] candidate in his place. They thought a woman running was a joke so allowed me to register.” 

Ms Tsikhanouskaya is widely believed to have won the election.

But Lukashenko claimed otherwise.

Martin Quinn, Hon Secretary Tipperary Peace Convention presents Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya with a copy of his book, 'Tipperary People of Great Note' at the Glen of Aherlow in Tipperary

Hundreds of thousands took to the streets in protest at what they said was a stolen election.

“Belarussians shouted in one voice ‘enough’. Enough of dictatorship, enough of oppression.’"

But the Lukashenko regime responded with violence. Some people were killed, many were injured and thousands were jailed.

Wearing the red and white wrist band, the colours of the Belarussian pro-democracy movement, which Ms Tsikhanouskaya wore on her visit, would land you in jail for five years, she said.

And Soviet-era jails there are harrowing. Torture, rape and humiliation are commonplace for political prisoners, who have no real recourse to justice or a fair trial, she said.

Fate of Ukraine and Belarus intertwined

The fate of Ukraine and Belarus are deeply intertwined, Ms Tsikhanouskaya said. Ukrainian freedom and a weaker Putin will galvanise the pro-democracy movement in Belarus.

“Belarussian society is boiling, it’s ready to explode.

“War in Ukraine has galvanised people who were politically neutral in Belarus to join the [pro-democracy] movement.

“We’re looking for powerful friends.

Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya addresses the attendance at the Tipperary International Peace Award ceremony at St. Mary's Church, Tipperary Town

International cooperation is extremely important. It sends a message to elites that there is no future with Lukashenko, that Belarussian people want to be part of the European family.” 

And Ms Tsikhanouskaya understands the power of international solidarity at a very personal level.

Ms Tsikhanouskaya had “all the excitement and happiness of a daughter coming home” when she returned to Ireland, chatting, drinking endless cups of tea and eating as much potato salad as she could “get her hands on” with the Deane family.

The Deanes in Roscrea had hosted has in her youth when she visited Ireland with the Chernobyl Children’s Project to escape radiation following the nuclear disaster.

“Since 2020 I have never felt happy. The pain lives with you every day. But when I met the Deanes yesterday, those wonderful warm people in this paradise, I felt happy. For a couple of hours I even forgot about the suffering, the tyranny.”