US President Joe Biden met with Belarusian opposition leader Svetlana Zihanusskaya at the White House on Wednesday (July 28) and strongly supported the democratic protesters who claimed she had won last year’s election.
“I am honored to meet @Tsihanouskaya at the White House this morning,” Biden said in a tweet, referring to the exiled opposition figure leading the fight against the strongman Alexander Lukashenko.
“The United States supports the people of Belarus in seeking democracy and universal human rights,” he added.
Qihanusskaya is visiting the United States to increase international pressure to overthrow Lukashenko. She called the meeting “an encouragement to our people.”
She told AFP in an interview shortly after the meeting that this is “a message to the world, and the greatest country in the world is with us.”
“This meeting is like the success of all Belarusians who are fighting,” she said.
Qihanusskaya said that she won easily in the August election, and Lukashenko, a close partner of Russian President Vladimir Putin, was announced as the winner of the sixth term.
The Belarusian authorities used force to suppress demonstrations against Lukashenko’s rule, and have been trying to stifle the remaining dissidents. They recently imprisoned university students and searched reporters’ homes.
In May, Belarus even forcibly shot down a civilian plane flying from Greece to Lithuania, citing security threats, and arrested an opposition journalist and his passenger girlfriend.
Talk about “pressure points”
An English teacher became a full-time mother, and when her husband was detained and replaced him as the presidential candidate, Qihanusskaya became the focus of international attention. For her safety, she fled to Lithuania.
She told AFP that she was not asking Biden to recognize the President of Belarus, but she wanted to increase the pressure on Lukashenko.
She said: “We talked about the various pressures on the regime, forcing him to stop violence, release political prisoners and start dialogue with the opposition.”
“Belarus can be an example of nonviolent transition of power.”
She said she also talked to Biden about ensuring the “independence and sovereignty” of Belarus-an implicit reference to Putin’s repeated concerns that he might seek to incorporate the country into Russia.
“When dictatorship becomes a threat to other countries, it is important to be with those who oppose them,” she said.
Qihanusskaya earlier hailed the meeting on Twitter as “a powerful sign of solidarity with millions of fearless Belarusians who are fighting for freedom and peace.”
“The world is with us. Belarus will be a success story.”
Qihanusskaya met with Secretary of State Anthony Brinken and Biden’s National Security Adviser Jack Sullivan in Washington last week.
She returned to Washington from New York and had an unannounced meeting with Biden when the US and Russian delegations were in Geneva to conclude their dialogue to follow up on his June summit with Putin.
After meeting with Brinken, Qihanusskaya said that she submitted to the United States a wish list of further sanctions against the regime.
She said that she hopes to impose sanctions on state-owned holding companies in the potash, oil, timber and steel sectors in an attempt to force Belarusian and international companies to choose whether to continue cooperating with the regime.
The United States and the European Union have imposed a series of sanctions on Belarusian companies and officials, although Tsikhanouskaya urged Europeans to fill loopholes that allow existing contracts to continue.
