Tuesday, December 14, 2021
Belarus dictator “takes revenge”
Tichanovskaya’s husband has been imprisoned for 18 years
Svetlana Tichanovskaya became the face of the Belarusian opposition when she ran in the presidential election last year to replace her imprisoned husband Sergei. Now the Belarusian judiciary has sentenced him to many years in a prison camp – under particularly harsh conditions.
Even before the verdict was pronounced against her husband, the Belarusian opposition leader Svetlana Tichanovskaya spoke of an “illegal” decision. Then, a few hours later, Sergej Tichanowski’s sentence was set: 18 years in a camp – under particularly harsh conditions. The Belarusian judiciary accuses the 43-year-old of having prepared and organized “mass uprisings”. But opposition activists and human rights activists are convinced that there is political calculation behind the verdict, which was read out in camera in camera – and retribution for the courage to rebel against the authoritarian ruler Alexander Lukashenko.
Tichanowski originally wanted to run against Lukashenko in last year’s presidential election, but was arrested months before the vote. His wife, Swetlana, took his place. With a view to the pronouncement of the verdict, she wrote: “The dictator publicly takes revenge on his strongest opponents.” Many Belarusians see the 39-year-old as the true winner of the election. Even the EU no longer recognizes Lukashenko as president after the vote, which was deemed to be falsified.
In addition to Tichanowski, five other men were sentenced to many years imprisonment on Tuesday – including the prominent opposition politician Nikolai Statkewitsch, who has to be in a prison camp for 14 years. The team of politician Viktor Babariko – he was sentenced to 14 years in prison in the summer – criticized the fact that all the accused were political prisoners. The case of Babariko’s colleague Maria Kolesnikowa, who had worked as a cultural manager in Stuttgart for several years and had to go to prison for eleven years, also caused particular horror in Germany.
“Last dictator of Europe”
Human rights activists speak of hundreds of political prisoners in Belarusian prisons. The new judgments were also immediately criticized by the West: “The commitment to democracy and freedom is not a crime, but a human right,” says a joint statement by FDP human rights expert Gyde Jensen and the Green Bundestag member Robin Wagener. The court decision was “brutal arbitrariness” Lukashenko.
Lukashenko, repeatedly referred to as the “last dictator in Europe”, is also criticized in the West because his security forces often cracked down on peaceful demonstrators in the months after the presidential election. Tens of thousands were arrested, hundreds injured and several people killed. For this reason, among other things, the EU imposed numerous sanctions against the ex-Soviet republic, which is now even more dependent on Russia’s backing than before.
Svetlana Tichanovskaya, who fled to Lithuania shortly after the vote and continued to work for the Belarusian democracy movement from there, repeatedly stressed that she did not want to give up. Even now she is combative: at some point the day will come when she will see her beloved husband again, she says in a video message – on the wall behind her there is a picture of Sergei. “And everything I do, I do for this moment.”
In the years to come, Tichanovskaya will probably not be able to visit her husband, with whom she has two children. In the event of a return, she too faces many years of imprisonment.