Belarusian opposition leader Svetlana Tsikhanouskaya expects European democracies to give greater hope and support to people in her home country if there is to be an end to oppression there.
European leaders must show the Belarusians that they are not forgotten and that they belong to the democratic world, the activist said at a forum in the Lithuanian parliament in Vilnius on Friday, the BNS news agency reported.
According to Tsikhanouskaya, who was driven into exile by Belarus' authoritarian ruler Alexander Lukashenko in 2020, people who had lived under oppression for so many years needed a "positive agenda."
However, she said leaders of democratic European countries have been reluctant to send positive messages to the Belarusian people that they were welcome and that the door was open to them.
"The people of Belarus are disappointed by this," said the 41-year-old Tsikhanouskaya, who now lives in Lithuania.
Lukashenko has ruled the former Soviet republic since 1994 and is a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. When he sought re-election as president for the sixth time in 2020, the opposition was convinced that his challenger Tsikhanouskaya had actually won the vote.
Lukashenko had himself declared the winner, and subsequent protests were brutally crushed. Like Tsikhanouskaya, many members of the opposition have since fled into exile.
"Everyone is a target of the regime, because the regime wants to punish anyone who has dared to challenge the dictator," Tsikhanouskaya told Friday's event in Vilnius.