Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya has completed a working visit to Iceland. The main topics of all meetings were how Iceland could help independent media, workers, doctors, and the whole civil society of Belarus in conditions of increased repression.
Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya met with the President, Prime Minister, Foreign Minister, and representatives of the Icelandic parliament.
Tsikhanouskaya stressed the importance of the sanctions against the regime to be swift and effective as the repression intensifies. She told stories of political prisoners, mentioned the huge flow of illegal migrants on the border with Lithuania as a reaction of the regime to the active support of the Lithuanian government for Belarusians.
They also discussed strengthening assistance to mass media, telegram channels, and YouTube projects, scholarships, and educational programs for repressed students. Tsikhanouskaia spoke about the self-organization of Belarusians: the “workers’ movement,” the telemedicine project, and samizdat. The head of the Icelandic Foreign Ministry asked for a list of specific actions that Iceland could take for the Belarusians.
The parties discussed the inclusion of Belarus into the agenda of the OSCE, the Nordic-Baltic Eight, and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE).
Concerning the export of seafood in Belarus, Tsikhanouskaya stressed the importance of transparency in business and respect for human rights.
She also discussed with the president of Iceland the installation of a monument to Thorvald Konradsson the Far Traveller, an Icelandic man among Belarus’s first baptizers.
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