Volha Zavadskaya: Lifting Sanctions Against Lukashenka Is Crime

In its actions the European Union should follow the logic.

It was said by Volha Zavadskaya, the mother of the abducted and murdered TV journalist Dzmitry Zavadski, who was abducted and murdered in 2000, Radio Racyja reports.

“If the European Union lifts sanctions from all persons on the list of banned from entering the democratic countries, including the suspects in grave crimes, it will be a real crime,” she stressed. “Politics became a dirty business for me long ago, and the reality is that it is a dirty business. By imposing or lifting sanctions, every country has a certain objective, so everything done by the European Union, anyway they are doing that for themselves, I think. If the previously slapped sanctions are lifted, certainly it will be a crime. After all, there should be some logic in their actions.”

We remind that the government of Belarus has not implemented any recommendations of international organisations concerning human rights and the rule of law, and the situation has deteriorated after the brutal actions of the government in winter 2010 – spring 2011. The situation in Belarus has turned into a protracted crisis, where human rights violations have “a system-level and systematic” character, according to the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Belarus. It has been caused by adoption of a number of repressive laws, and use of increasingly repressive measures, which destroy fundamental freedoms.

Harsh actions of the authorities after the presidential elections on December 19, 2010, including police violence against protesters, detention of more than 700 persons, tortures and inhuman treatment of detainees, unjust trials, in the result of which more than 40 persons were convicted and who were recognized political prisoners, have not been investigated.

The government of Belarus refuses to cooperate with international human rights mechanisms on the most important issues of human rights, and does not recognize the mandate of the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Belarus.

None of the political prisoners was rehabilitated.