Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya again nominated for Nobel Prize

According to her adviser Franak Viačorka, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya has been nominated for the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize. “It is a recognition for all Belarusians who continue fighting for freedom,” he wrote. Two Norwegian parliamentarians initiated the nomination process. This is the second nomination for the Belarus’s opposition leader: last year she was nominated by Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda.

In her recent address, Tsikhanouskaya emphasized that the number of political prisoners in Belarus has exceeded the 1,000 mark, and the number of people held in prisons on political grounds is even greater. She said: “1,000 political prisoners are not only 1,000 families without breadwinners, broken hearts and broken lives of relatives and friends. 1,000 political prisoners are the reason why many countries refused to cooperate with Belarus, and we are losing a lot of money on this. <…> As long as these people are not free, you are also paying the price. It’s you whose normal life is being taken away.”