Tsikhanouskaya's message from Timișoara: dictators cannot be appeased

Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya looked down at the square in Timișoara from the opera house balcony, and was reminded of the 2020 protests in Minsk. The leader of the Belarusian democratic opposition received Timișoara's European Values Award on Friday, and the accompanying 30,000 euros she will donate to Belarusian cultural initiatives. At the award ceremony, she asked Europe to stand by Ukraine, and to also declare that a free Belarus has a place in the European community.

Dominic Fritz in his laudation went back seventy years. On November 6, 1956, the Romanian communist prosecution brought charges against several student leaders in Timișoara who had organized a protest upon hearing news of the Hungarian revolution, while Tsikhanouskaya met with participants of the 1989 revolution in the city, and as she said, she sometimes almost forgot they were talking about Romania. What people told her about fear was familiar to her, but even more familiar was the moment when strangers suddenly stand next to each other in the street and realize they want the same thing. In Minsk in August 2020, after the disputed presidential election, the same demands were voiced that she recognized from the stories of Timișoara's revolutionaries. People wanted free elections, a multi-party system, and leaders who could be held accountable.

At Friday's university discussion, Tsikhanouskaya also spoke about why she brings photographs of political prisoners with her to public appearances. Belarus continues to hold about nine hundred people in custody for political reasons, and arrests continue even as others are released. Last year, Tsikhanouskaya's husband, Siarhei, was also released after more than five years, but this week the human rights organization Viasna reported that a Catholic priest who had publicly opposed Russia's war against Ukraine and had helped Ukrainian refugees had been sentenced to three years in prison.

The speech in Timișoara already had a very practical precedent in Bucharest. On Wednesday, Tsikhanouskaya held talks with Romanian President Nicușor Dan, asking that the EU keep up pressure on the Minsk regime until it ends its repression, releases all political prisoners, and stops supporting Russian aggression. They also discussed the possibility of Romania joining the humanitarian fund that helps political prisoners and persecuted people. In Timișoara, she condensed this into a pair of sentences: “Dictators cannot be appeased. They can be confronted.”

Ugar