Svetlana Aleksievich Speaks For Tougher Sanctions Against Lukashenka Regime

The Nobel laureate also admitted that after her trip to Europe she may not be allowed to enter Belarus.

Svetlana Aleksievich fears that after a trip to Europe she will not be able to return to Belarus, and spoke in favor of tougher sanctions against the Belarusian authorities. The Belarusian writer said this at a press conference of the Taormina Book festival.

Svetlana Aleksievich is visiting Taormina (Italy) today, for the Taormina Book festival, where she was awarded the Taormina Award for Literary Excellence. Before participating in the festival, the writer talked to the local press.

When asked if she would return to Belarus after visiting Europe, Aleksievich said that she did not plan to remain in exile. After participating in a festival in Sicily and visiting a doctor in Berlin, she plans to return to Belarus. But the writer herself and her entourage have doubts that she will be allowed into the country. Svetlana Aleksievich admitted that she doesn't feel safe, because all of her like-minded people are either in prison or in forced emigration. Most likely, the writer means the Presidium of the Coordination Council, of which she is a member.

- The authorities have already made an attempt to arrest me. And they would have done it sooner or later. It's a crazy feeling when you realize that you might be arrested. None of us could believe it until recently, - said the writer. At the same time, she believes that to some extent she is protected by the position of a Nobel laureate.

The Nobel Prize Laureate spoke about what is happening in Belarus. The writer emphasized that Belarusians who go to the marches want to live “like free people live”.

- I look in the faces of today's youth, whom there are many at the freedom marches, and I recall the 90es. Then we took to the square and shouted “Freedom! Freedom!” But we didn't know what it was. We only had a bookish, romantic idea of freedom. We thought that freedom was somewhere around the corner, but then we realized that the path to freedom is long and difficult,” Aleksievich says to Corriere della Sera.

With a reference to the title of one of her books "War’s Unwomanly Face", the writer says that "the revolution in Belarus has precisely a womanly face." Women are marching in the forefront of the rallies of many thousands, thereby showing their strength and that in response to the arrests of their men, they can turn the patriarchal society upside down.

The Nobel laureate also called for the introduction of tougher sanctions against the Belarusian authorities. Belarus found itself alone during the political crisis, she said. Probably because "there is an unspoken agreement between Europe and Russia that Belarus is a zone of Russia's interests."