The Belarusian opposition leader and former presidential candidate Svetlana Tichanovskaya is this year’s Anna Lindh prize winner.
On Monday, she will be awarded the prize on site at Lindh’s grave in Stockholm.
– The Belarusians who show their support for Ukraine are imprisoned. Partisan groups that tried to stop Russian rail transport through Belarus now face the death penalty, she says.
When Svetlana Tichanovskaya’s husband was imprisoned, she quickly took his place as opposition leader against Aleksandr Lukashenko’s increasingly hard-line rule over Belarus.
After Lukashenko won the 2020 presidential election, he was accused of extensive electoral fraud. Among others by Tikhanovskaya – who was forced into exile under threats.
– I see myself as one of the political prisoners deprived of liberty in Belarus. You look at time from a different perspective as a political prisoner, they are the ones I fight for every day, she says.
“We keep fighting”
In its justification, Anna Lindh’s memorial fund writes the following about Tichanovskaya’s contribution:
“Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya took on an incomparable responsibility when, at the risk of her own safety, after the rigged presidential election in Belarus in 2020, she led the popular protests for democracy after her husband was imprisoned.”
During her three years in exile, she has worked hard to shed light on the political situation in her home country, with the goal of Minsk releasing the country’s political prisoners.
– Our main task is to show the prisoners through action that we continue to fight. When international pressure does not have an effect, when sanctions do not work fully – then we must continue to open doors and find new solutions, she says.
The prize was awarded at a memorial ceremony in Katarina church in Stockholm, on the day 20 years after Anna Lindh’s death. During the evening, Anna Lindh’s life and political work in Sweden and the world were illuminated through various conversations with, among others, Göran Persson, Carl Bildt and Margot Wallström.