Hungarian Overseas Minister Peter Szijjarto on Monday grew to become the primary senior official from a European Union nation to go to Belarus for the reason that authoritarian Belarusian regime imposed a harsh crackdown on opposition in 2020.
His journey got here because the EU is predicted to think about a brand new package deal of sanctions in opposition to Belarus. The EU has slapped an array of sanctions on the nation already, each for the repression that adopted mass protests in opposition to the 2020 presidential election — extensively seen as rigged — and for Belarus’ internet hosting Russian troops in the course of the warfare in Ukraine.
Belarusian political analyst Valery Karbalevich stated that because of the sanctions Minsk is experiencing “enormous” difficulties with the export of potash fertilizers — a key income — and oil merchandise.
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“And the continuation of the war (in Ukraine) is tightening the financial knot across the neck of Belarus,” Karbalevich stated. “The Belarusian authorities are doing their finest to ease this strain.”
Belarus has not deployed troops in Ukraine, however Russian troopers based mostly there have crossed the border into Ukraine’s north.
Hungarian Overseas Minister Peter Szijjarto was the primary European Union consultant to go to Belarus for the reason that Lukashenko regime’s crackdown on opposition in 2020.
After the 2020 election that gave authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko a brand new time period, large protests broke out and endured for weeks, the most important and most extended wave of unrest since Lukashenko got here to energy in 1994.
He unleashed a brutal crackdown on the protesters; greater than 35,000 folks had been arrested and 1000’s had been crushed by police. Amongst these arrested was human rights activist Ales Bialiatski, certainly one of final yr’s Nobel Peace Prize laurates. He’s on trial and faces 12 years in jail if convicted.
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Belarusian opposition chief Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who ran in opposition to Lukashenko in 2020 and left the nation days after the election, condemned Szijjarto’s vist.
“At a time when a Nobel laureate is being tried, journalists are being tortured, Russian troopers are being educated earlier than going to struggle in Ukraine, such actions are unacceptable,” she stated.
In closing remarks at his closed-door trial, Bialiatski stated Monday that Lukashenko made “a political choice to crush and destroy the civil society of Belarus,” in accordance with the Viasna human rights heart that he based.
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Bialiatski and two different Viasna figures are charged with tax evasion, smuggling and financing actions that undermine public order – fees linked to Viasna paying the authorized charges of individuals it regards as political prisoners.