Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya: I don't know if my husband is alive, we live in hell

President of the Coordination Council of Belarus and Head of the United Transitional Cabinet Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya was interviewed by TVN24 BiS journalist Michał Sznajder.

Asked about the Polish-Belarusian journalist and activist Andrzej Poczobut, Tsikhanouskaya said: "Honestly speaking, I can’t give you any information because Andrzej Poczobut, the same as dozens of other political prisoners, is kept in incommunicado mode."

"Incommunicado mode means that lawyer cannot visit a prisoner. Letter are not delivered, so you actually don’t know what’s going on with your friend, your partner or your relative in prison," she added.

"I don’t know if my husband is alive, I don’t know in what physical state is Andrzej (Poczobut – edit.) – no information."

Tsikhanouskaya explained that the Lukashenko regime not only aims to put pressure on relatives of the detained persons, but also to break those imprisoned.

She said that Poczobut "knows that he didn’t do anything bad". "He just promoted Belarusian democracy and now he is in prison. And they want to break him physically, break him morally."

"He’s an extremely strong person and he’s an embodiment of all political prisoners here in Poland. And I encourage Polish people not to forget about such brave people in Belarusian prisons," she urged.

Asked once again about the pain and hardship of not being able to hear anything from or about her husband, she said: "That’s hell. And we are living in this hell."

"There is a proverb that if you want to want leave hell as soon as possible, don’t stop. You have to move forward because it’s awful when your children are asking you every day when their daddy will return or why my daddy isn’t answering my letters. And you realize that thousands of families are broken," Tsikhanouskaya said.

"This pain, this anger gives you energy to continue this fight."

In December 2021, Siarhei Tsikhanousky was sentenced to 18 years in prison. If he serves the full term, Tsikhanousky will be more than 60 years old at the time of his release.

Andrzej Poczobut is a journalist and activist of the Polish minority in Belarus. He has been in custody since March 25, 2021, and on February 8, 2023, he was sentenced to eight years in a maximum-security penal colony. Since his appeal against the sentence has been rejected, Poczobut remains in the penal colony in Novopolotsk.

WATCH THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH SVIATLANA TSIKHANOUSKAYA BELOW