Large crowd greets Belarusian opposition leader on visit to Warsaw for talks

Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya has met with Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda, and the mayor of Warsaw, Rafał Trzaskowski, during a visit to the Polish capital to discuss support for Belarusians fleeing to their western neighbour.

Tsikhanouskaya, who was greeted by a large crowd of supporters, also unveiled a monument to Poland’s first semi-free elections in 1989 amid the collapse of communism, the anniversary of which was commemorated today.

On Friday, Tsikhanouskaya met with Duda to discuss support for Belarusian citizens fleeing to Poland to escape political persecution. The president also met with three community leaders from the Polish minority in Belarus whom Poland helped to release from detainment in late May.

“As Polish authorities, we will do our best not to allow a wedge to be driven between Poles and Belarusians,” said Duda at the meeting with Irena Biernacka, Anna Paniszewa and Maria Tiszkowska.

In past months, Poland has offered refuge to Belarusian activists, assistance to help businesses relocate and scholarships for students fleeing Belarus. Polish state broadcaster TVP also runs Belsat, a television station which has served as an independent source of information in Belarusian.

Earlier on Friday, Tsikhanouskaya also met with Warsaw mayor Rafał Trzaskowski, a leading opposition figure who came a close second to Duda in last year’s presidential election.

The pair discussed help for the parents of Raman Pratasevich, a journalist kidnapped from a plane forced to make an emergency landing in Minsk last month and who had previously sought refuge in Poland. “This city has become a haven for many people fleeing from the regime,” Tsikhanouskaya said.

Trzaskowski, who referred to Tsikhanouskaya as “president-elect”, said that Poland’s local governments were helping to “transfer information and support Belarusian organisations”, as well as by providing housing to those settling in the country.

Tsikhanouskaya later took part in the unveiling of a new monument in Warsaw – featuring the logo of the Solidarity trade union and two fragments from the Berlin wall – to commemorate the 32nd anniversary of Poland’s first semi-free elections.

Yesterday, she also met with participants in a hunger strike that two activists started outside the office of the European Commission in Warsaw. Their aim is to elicit further EU sanctions against Belarus.

Tsikhanouskaya said that the protesters said are “full of energy, courage and willingness to reach out with their message” and that she “supported all their actions” aiming to “publicise the situation in Belarus”.

The democratic figurehead added that the recent hijacking of a plane to detain Pratasevich “helped the EU understand how much the situation in Belarus is deteriorating”. Speaking to TVP on Thursday, she said that the move showed “a sense of impunity of the regime”.

Following media speculation that Belarus had originally hatched the plan in order to seize Tsikhanouskaya, she confirmed reports that she had taken the same flight from Athens to Vilnius days earlier, but had made changes to her ticket reservations.

She also announced that, while in Warsaw, she had met with Belarusian and Polish lawyers to “discuss how to bring to justice the regime’s criminals”. During her stay, Tsikhanouskaya also received the “Person of the Year” award from Gazeta Wyborcza, one of Poland’s largest daily newspapers.

Relations between Poland and Belarus have deteriorated over Warsaw’s overt support for the Belarusian democratic opposition. On her first trip abroad after going into exile last year, Tsikhanouskaya visited Warsaw, where she received backing from the Polish government, which has also pushed for EU action against Belarus.

This has drawn an angry response from Minsk. President Alexander Lukashenko accused Poland of seeking to capitalise on the situation in his country by reclaiming former Polish territories from Belarus. No such ambition has been expressed by any mainstream politician or commentator in Poland.

Russia, an ally of Minsk, also criticised the Polish government for “openly interfering in the domestic affairs of the Republic of Belarus”. The Kremlin “urged Warsaw to return to the universally accepted norms of international law and renounce its policy of undermining the sovereignty of its neighbour”.

Recent months have seen a clampdown on Belarus’s large ethnic Polish minority, four of whose leaders have been in detention since March and are facing potential jail terms.

Main image credit: Kuba Atys / Agencja Gazeta

Maria Wilczek

Maria Wilczek is deputy editor of Notes from Poland. She is a regular writer for The Times, The Economist and Al Jazeera English, and has also featured in Foreign Policy, Politico Europe, The Spectator and Gazeta Wyborcza.