Andrei Sannikov

Andrei Olegovich Sannikov (or Andrei Sannikau, Андрэй Алегавіч Саннікаў, Андрей Олегович Санников, born 8 March 1954) is a Belarusian politician and activist.

Andrei Sannikov was born on 8 March 1954 in the city of Minsk.

His father was a well-known Belarusian art researcher while his mother was a teacher of the Russian language.

His grandfather Konstantin Sannikov was a well-known actor and film director in the Byelorussian SSR, one of founders of the Janka Kupala National Theatre, and a teacher at the Belarusian Theater and Art Institute in Moscow.

Sannikov first attended school No. 42 as a boy, and in 1977 he graduated from Minsk State Linguistic University.

He is fluent in his native Belarusian, Russian, English, and French.

After graduating, Sannikov spent time working for a Soviet oil company in Pakistan and in Egypt working on the construction of an aluminum plant.

Sannikov then went to work at the Union of Soviet Societies for Friendship and Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries, and in 1982 began serving as a translator (Russian Translation Service) at the UN Secretariat in New York City.

He remained in New York for five years.

In the early 1990s, he headed the Belarusian delegation on Nuclear and Conventional Weapons Armament Negotiations, also serving as a Belarusian diplomat to Switzerland.

Just before the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, Sannikov graduated from the Diplomatic Academy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation in Moscow.

Immediately after he worked in the Foreign Ministry of the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic.

At one of the sessions, he quoted "The Foreign Ministry should not be in service of one party, but must serve to the Belarusian nation".

The Nunn-Lugar project had originated in the U.S. Senate in 1991 after the former Soviet Republics decided to get rid of their nuclear weapons.

The program, a part of the U.S. Department of Defense, provided Belarus with technical and financial assistance to reduce and disarm nuclear weapons.

In 1992, Sannikov headed the Belarusian delegation on Nuclear and Conventional Weapons Armament Negotiations (the Soviet Republics agreed to disarm all nuclear weapons in 1991).

From 1995 to 1996, he served as Deputy Foreign Minister of Belarus, resigning as a form of political protest.

He had authority of signature in the matter on behalf of Belarus, an authority he retained until 1995.

During this time, he was also an advisor to the Belarusian diplomatic mission in Switzerland.

From 1995 to 1996 he served as Deputy Foreign Minister of Belarus, and obtained the rank of Ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary.

As Deputy Minister in winter of 1995, he co-authored a paper defending the Nunn-Lugar program, and admonishing the U.S. Congress for its inclination to reduce its funding.

In November 1996, on the eve of a controversial referendum, Sannikov resigned from his post in protest of Lukashenko's policies.

The referendum severely limited democratic standards and the separation of powers in Belarus, and changed the Belarus constitution to extend Lukashenko's presidential term.

According to the Belarus Speaker of Parliament, 20 to 50 percent of the counted votes were falsified.

In November 1997, Sannikov was one of the co-founders of the civil initiative Charter 97, becoming its international coordinator.

Charter 97 is a human rights group modeled on Charter 77 in then-Czechoslovakia.

The group hosts one of the most popular Belarusian news web pages, and is a rare voice of opposition to the Lukashenko party in Belarus.

In 1998, Sannikov and Hienadz Karpienka created the Coordinating Council of Democratic Forces of Belarus, which actively speaks for human rights.

Victor Ivashkevich and Mikhail Marinich also took part.

In the years following, Sannikov helped organize a variety of non-violent protests in Belarus, including protests against the elections of 2001, 2004, 2006, and 2008, which were heavily criticized by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the EU for lack of transparency, intimidation of voters, suppression of opposition groups, and suspected falsification of results.

He co-founded the civil action Charter 97, and was awarded the Bruno Kreisky Prize in 2005.

On 4 April 2005, the international Bruno Kreisky Prize was awarded to Sannikov at an award ceremony in the State Hall of the National Library in Vienna.

When the mass protests after the presidential election in 2006 were violently suppressed by riot police, Sannikov stated he was beaten and jailed, and his computers, disks, and memory sticks were seized.

Sannikov was a candidate at the 2010 presidential election in Belarus, and had the second highest percentage of the popular votes after incumbent Alexander Lukashenko.

He was incarcerated in a Minsk KGB facility for peacefully protesting at a demonstration after the elections.

Sannikov was beaten by police, tortured, and held incommunicado for two months.

Amnesty International labeled him a prisoner of conscience.

According to his wife, noted journalist Iryna Khalip, as of September 2011 Sannikov was in grave danger of murder and injury while incarcerated, and was being pressured by authorities to leave politics.

After 16 months in prison, Sannikov was released and pardoned by Lukashenko in April 2012.

Since 2012 he has lived in London, where he received political asylum.