Svetlana Tijanóvskaya never wanted to know anything about politics, let alone devote herself to it. This former English teacher took care of her children until the 2020 presidential election in Belarus turned her life upside down. Everything happened to her: her husband was imprisoned and she became a successful candidate who had to flee the country the day after the elections, harassed by Alexander Lukashenko’s regime. Tijanóvskaya still sees herself as an ordinary woman, but in two and a half years she has traveled tens of thousands of kilometers and sat down with key Western leaders to rally support for the cause of a democratic Belarus.
The regime, which underestimated her candidacy, now sees her as public enemy number one and has been negotiating her in absentia since last Tuesday along with other opponents, including Nobel Peace Prize winner Ales Bialiatski. They accuse her of treason and attempted seizure of power, punishable by up to 15 years in prison. Tijanóvskaya denounces that the regime detains 17 people every day; not only dissidents, but also their partners, lawyers and even those who are against the war in Ukraine. In her case, she is confident that “the judge will render the sentence ordered,” as she explains over audio. “It has nothing to do with justice: it is a farce, a revenge”, Graben.
The story of Tijanóvskaya begins when video blogger and activist Sergei Tijanovski, her husband, ran in the 2020 presidential election against Lukashenko, who has been in power since 1994. Tikhanovski was arrested and barred from running for president. She says that out of love she decided to present herself in his place. He achieved unprecedented mobilization with the support of the other two candidacies whose list leaders had also been neutralized.
The elections opened a deep rift in the Lukashenko regime, which has been hit by disastrous management of the pandemic. The authoritarian leader claimed victory in elections that the international community saw as a fraud. Citizens came out en masse to protest and the regime showed the repression it is capable of with more than 35,000 arrested and several dead among the demonstrators. Lukashenko has been left isolated from the West, with Russian President Vladimir Putin as his only ally.
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In those summer 2020 campaign days, Tijanovskaya was a novice in everything. He took advice because he knew his limits. He had never held a rally or press conference. And she certainly wasn’t prepared for the interrogation the day after the election. She never spoke about what happened, only that she was forced to leave the country in a few hours. It’s either that or they go to jail and lose their children.
Tijanóvskaya, 40, has repeated a thousand times that she doesn’t see herself as a politician. He was born in Mikasevichi, near Ukraine, and studied pedagogy in Brest. As a child she spent her summers in Ireland participating in programs for children affected by Chernobyl. There she learned English and later worked for a while as a teacher of this language.
In two and a half years he has experienced a profound metamorphosis. She has gained confidence as she has overcome betrayals and disappointments. He has studied and learned a lot about diplomacy, international relations and economics. Belarusian political scientist Tatsiana Chulitskaya, who works at Vilnius University and Manchester Metropolitan and knows her well, believes that “she’s definitely already a politician and thinks like a politician”. “She has become the most experienced Belarusian diplomat,” she says on the phone.
Tijanóvskaya sees herself as a representative of the Belarusians, but does not want to govern the country with 9.4 million inhabitants. No less alone does he want to give her democratic elections in which she will not stand. With an often serious, serious expression on his face, he feels the responsibility of those who have suffered reprisals resting on his shoulders. About the tortured About 1,500 political prisoners who are imprisoned in appalling conditions. She is burdened with the collective tragedy of Belarusians and with her own drama as a mother raising her children aged seven and twelve alone and in exile in Vilnius, always surrounded by a security team, while her husband has already been sentenced to 18 years He faces new charges.
There were some divisions in exile and among the opposition. There are people who criticize her for raising funds with no apparent results. Some are disappointed. “Everyone was waiting for her to come up with a plan to overthrow the dictator,” explains Ruslan Szoszyn, a journalist with the Polish daily Rzeczpospolita, who has written a book about her and the Belarusian opposition. “But it’s not easy because there is no army, no tanks, no planes. Their weapons are words,” he added in an exchange.
Tijanóvskaya is not giving up her efforts to meet with world leaders and attend international platforms such as the World Economic Forum in Davos this week to warn that the situation in her country, which was thrown into war by Lukashenko, is getting worse of Ukraine was drawn into. It also works with underground groups in Belarus and is preparing the technical foundations for the transition to democracy with electoral laws, a new constitution and economic reforms. She misses life before that, the last summer she spent with her husband. But she’s not that woman anymore, now she’s the face of Belarus screaming for democracy, the one trying to crack the regime.
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