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EU ambition of Belarus’ exiled opposition shows it is out of touch [1]
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Date: 2023-09
At a conference in Warsaw last month, the Belarusian opposition led by Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya adopted a ‘Declaration of the future membership of Belarus in the European Union’. Tsikhanouskaya has now appointed an adviser to advance this goal, and affirmed it this week in a speech at the European Parliament.
This latest policy from Tsikhanouskaya’s opposition, working in exile since her country’s rigged presidential election in 2020, risks increasing the distance between her team and the demands of Belarusians living inside the country.
Hundreds of thousands of Belarusians took to the streets in protest after the blatantly fraudulent 2020 election. Since then, most of the opposition has been either in prison or in exile.
Most alarmingly, the status of several prominent opponents of Alexander Lukashenka is unknown: Viktar Babaryka, Siarhei Tsikhanousky (Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya’s husband) and Maria Kalesnikava – three significant actors in the protest movement of 2020 – have been held incommunicado for more than half a year. The regime seems to believe that if they are unseen they will be forgotten about.
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The in-country opposition and network of campaign and activist groups known as ‘civil society’ have both been decimated. Belarus now has more political prisoners relative to its population than China, with more than 1,500 in total, and the regime has continued to crack down ruthlessly and relentlessly on any dissent. The regime suppresses any symbols of Belarusian identity at odds with its own national project (which is tightly bound with Russia and the Soviet past). Even speaking Belarusian in Belarus today is fraught with danger because it is interpreted as a rejection of the Lukashenka regime’s staunchly pro-Russia orientation.
The large-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 diverted international attention and resources away from the plight of Belarusians. One response of the exiled opposition to this relative neglect was to express greater support for a ‘European path’ for Belarus. It was only in 2022 that Tsikhanouskaya publicly criticised Russia. She had not contested the 2020 election with any intention of bringing Belarus closer to the EU. On the contrary, one of the opposition’s first resolutions after the 2020 vote was that Belarus would not reorient away from Russia under her leadership.
Part of Tsikhanouskaya’s appeal to Belarusians in 2020 was her neutrality on geopolitical orientation and her inclusivity. Although she adopted the white-red-white symbols associated with the traditional Belarusian opposition after the election (which emphasise difference from Russia and a historical identity linked to modern-day Lithuania and Poland), she had not endorsed these prior to the vote.
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[1] Url:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/exiled-belarus-opposition-european-union-eu-out-of-touch/
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