Women Lead The Way Against Belarus' Patriarch, Says Svetlana Tikhanovskaya

Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the unlikely challenger to Belarus' five-term president, takes issue with being called an opposition leader.

"OK, first of all, if you don't mind, would you please not call us 'opposition'? Because we are not the opposition anymore, we are the majority," she told NPR in an interview from her exile in Lithuania.

Tikhanovskaya, 37, was forced to leave Belarus after President Alexander Lukashenko, Europe's longest-serving leader, declared a landslide victory in the Aug. 9 presidential election. Nationwide protests against massive vote rigging erupted, with tens of thousands of peaceful demonstrators thronging the capital, Minsk, on the past three weekends.

"Lukashenko has to understand that the point of no return has already passed, and nothing will be the same as it was," Tikhanovskaya said. "The people have changed. The people have woken up."