Milinkevich: Belarus will be democratic within two years :: Charter'97 :: News

Belarusian opposition leader Alexander Milinkevich said Monday he was sure the totalitarian ex-Soviet republic would become democratic in two years, despite a campaign of intimidation by President Alexander Lukashenko. Milinkevich said that even though Lukashenko has clamped down on dissidents and students, the demonstrations against his regime will not stop. "There is a problem in today`s Belarus: the authorities are doing everything they can to intimidate people, not only imprisoning them, but firing them from jobs, from school ... But I don`t think fear prevails, young people demonstrating are not afraid of the KGB anymore," Milinkevich told European Union lawmakers a day before he was to receive the Sakharov Prize, the EU`s top human rights award names after one of the best known former Soviet dissidents.

"I`m sure democracy will come to my country within two years," Milinkevich told the European Parliament in Belarusian.
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Milinkevich ran unsuccessfully against Lukashenko in elections in March which officials said Lukashenko won overwhelmingly but opposition activists and Western countries rejected as rigged. He has led unprecedented demonstrations.

He spent two weeks in jail following an April 26 protest that attracted about 10,000 people, and was recently briefly detained three times.

Milinkevich said fellow dissident Alexander Kozulin, imprisoned since this spring`s protests, remains in critical condition after refusing to end his hunger strike, lasting more than 50 days.

"He has lost more than 40 kilos (88 pounds). I`m worried about him," Milinkevich said.

Lukashenko — who has ruled the nation since 1994 with an iron fist, earning him the nickname "Europe`s last dictator" — won another five-year term in the March vote. He is accused of jailing his critics and quashing Belarus` independent media.

Milinkevich, a physicist and mathematician by profession, has been a unifying figure for an opposition that incorporates widely diverse forces ranging from pro-Westerners to Communists.