Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya and Roberto Montella in Copenhagen, 22 Oct. 2020COPENHAGEN, 22 October 2020 – Exiled Belarusian opposition figure Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya visited the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly’s International Secretariat today and met with OSCE PA Secretary General Roberto Montella. The visit was on the margins of a broader programme of meetings in the Danish capital and served as an opportunity to follow up on a web dialogue hosted by the PA on 23 September 2020 with OSCE PA Bureau members, Tsikhanouskaya, and Belarusian Head of Delegation Andrei Savinykh.

Accompanied by her advisor, Franak Viacorka, Tsikhanouskaya shared her views with Montella on the current situation in Belarus and prospects for dialogue with the authorities in Minsk. She welcomed the invocation of the OSCE Moscow Mechanism, called for increased attention on human rights violations, and urged continued international pressure. She also stressed the need for protests in Belarus to be non-violent and emphasized that the Belarusian situation is not of a geopolitical nature.

SG Montella offered the OSCE PA as an impartial platform for dialogue and underlined his continued efforts to engage with the key players in Minsk in order to create a direct channel dialogue and communication between Tsikhanouskaya and the Belarus authorities. He noted the many actions taken so far by the OSCE PA leadership and stressed again the need to keep public assemblies peaceful and the expectation of a non-violent law enforcement posture.