Reader’s Digest: Tsikhanouskaya is European of the Year

Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya

 

Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, Belarus’s Opposition Leader, was honored for standing up to the dictatorship in her home country.

 

Each year Reader’s Digest editors in Europe nominate a shortlist of Europeans who have had a major influence on a pressing contemporary issue and are helping to make the world a better place. First launched in 1996, the European of the Year for 2022 is 39-year-old Belarus Opposition Leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya. She has been presented with the award trophy at her headquarters in Vilnius, Lithuania, the country where she has been living in exile since running against Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko in contested elections that took place in August 2020.

 

The award recognizes Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya’s bravery in standing up to Lukashenko, the dictator who had jailed her husband, pro-democracy activist and opposition leader Sergei Tikhanovsky, just before those elections. Tsikhanouskaya, a mother of two and formerly a teacher with no political experience, stepped into the race, garnering huge support. After Lukashenko declared himself the landslide winner, tens of thousands took to the streets across Belarus to protest the election rigging. They were met with riot police and rubber bullets. Several protestors were killed and thousands detained. Tsikhanouskaya and her children were forced to flee to neighboring Lithuania.

 

But she continues her fight against her home country’s corrupt dictatorship. Over the past two years Tsikhanouskaya has met with world leaders, and a range of sanctions have since been imposed on the Lukashenko regime by the European Union, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada.  Tsikhanouskaya explains, “I know I’m a target, and that for the regime it would be easier if I disappeared. But every Belarusian is in danger until we get rid of the criminal group that seized power.”

 

Meantime, Lukashenko continues to keep an iron grip on power in Belarus, a country of nearly ten million. His regime has been branded Europe’s last dictatorship. Since coming to power in 1994 in the former Soviet state’s first presidential election, he has suppressed protests and imposed censorship. The United Nations has consistently noted human rights violations; Amnesty International has called his government misogynistic for targeting female activists.

 

Tsikhanouskaya tirelessly publicizes the situation in Belarus, lobbying countries for support for a new, fair election and the release of political prisoners. The goal is to build international pressure on Lukashenko’s government to stop its barbaric crackdown on civil society.

 

Why does she continue to fight? “I dream of a Belarus where people can live in happiness,” Tsikhanouskaya says. “Where people are not killed or imprisoned for their beliefs. Where the opinion of citizens is taken into account. If I stop now, nothing will change.”

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Reader’s Digest is published in Europe in 10 editions and eight languages. March issues carry the major feature on Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya.

 

Note on Reader’s Digest European of the Year Award

Since this unique award was launched 27 years ago, Reader’s Digest magazine has honored people who have dedicated themselves to campaigning on issues such as corruption, rape, torture, human trafficking, HIV/AIDs and women’s rights.

 

2021 Petteri Taalas of Finland, the top meteorologist who has prompted action by world leaders to fight climate change

2020 Selina Juul, who founded Denmark’s Stop Wasting Food movement

2019 Óscar Camps, the Spanish life-saver for rescuing hundreds of migrants from drowning in the Mediterranean

2018 Edit Schlaffer, Austrian creator of MotherSchools equipping mothers to identify and tackle extremism

2017 Boyan Slat, a young Dutch inventor for efforts to remove plastic waste in the world’s rivers and oceans

2016 Laura Kövesi, anti-corruption czar in Romania (appointed the first public prosecutor of EU fraud in 2019)

2015 Felix Finkbeiner, the German teenager encouraging people to plant millions of trees across the planet

2014 Thomas Minder, who promoted ground-breaking controls to curb Swiss corporate excess

2013 Agnieszka Romanzewska-Guzy, founder of Belsat TV in Poland promoting press freedom in Belarus

2012 Isabel Jonet, food bank campaigner whose work helps 400,000 Portuguese from going hungry

2011 Monika Hauser, the activist Italian physician supporting victims of sexual violence in war zones

2010 Iana Matei, who founded Reaching out Romania for victims of human trafficking and sexual exploitation

2009 Joachim Franz, the German cyclist for leading a crusade against HIV/AIDS

2008 Maria Nowak, a Polish economist supporting the poor via microcredit aid

2007 Dr Ruedi Lüthy, the Swiss AIDS specialist who set up clinics in Zimbabwe

2006 Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali-born Dutch-American for protecting Muslim women’s rights from militant Islam

2005 Leonid Roshal, a Russian doctor at the scene of the Beslan massacre (later a Nobel Peace Prize contender)

2004 Peter Eigen, the German founder of NGO Transparency International

2003 Simon Pánek, who co-founded the Czech People in Need organisation

2002: Eva Joly, the judge who investigated fraud in the Elf-Aquitaine case (and later became a French MEP)

2001 Linus Benedict Torvalds, a Finnish-American software engineer who invented the Linux operating system

2000 Paul van Buitenen, the Dutch whistleblower on EC fraud and inefficiency (and later MEP)

1999 Dr Inge Genefke, Danish physician who founded rehab centres for torture victims

1998 Pete Goss, the British solo sailor who rescued a competitor from drowning

1997 Frederic Hauge, who as a Norwegian activist tackled nuclear waste storage

1996 Father Imre Kozma, a Hungarian priest helping refugees and the homeless