EUobserver: Belarus is trying to mend relations with the EU

Belarus has released two prominent political prisoners - former presidential candidate Andrei Sannikov and his aide Dmitry Bondarenko - in what is seen as a bid to mend EU relations.

Both were incarcerated last year for allegedly disturbing the peace and instigating riots following the 19 December 2010 protests in Minsk against Alexander Lukashenko's fraudulent reelection. Both received a pardon by Lukashenko on Saturday (14 April).

"This is the result of the actions of the European Union," Sannikov told Belarusian opposition website Chater97 on Sunday, referring to EU sanctions.

"But I would like to emphasise that it is only due to the solidarity of the Belarusians, families of the political prisoners, our friends, in fact the entire country, that influential international institutions have introduced clear and straight politics regarding Belarus in the decisions," added the 58-year-old former deputy foreign minister.

Sannikov had been sentenced to 5 years, enduring solitary conferment, isolation, and allegations of torture at a labour camp in Vitebsk, in northeast Belarus. Bondarenko was sentenced to two years at a penal colony in Mogilev and released a day after Sannikov.

The EU has repeatedly called for the release of all political prisoners - including 10 others still incarcerated. In March, the Union stepped up its sanctions by trageting two oligarchs and 29 firms said to be financing the regime, on top of more than 200 officials and politicians on earlier blacklists.

EU ambassadors left the country in February in an act of solidarity with the Polish and EU envoys, who had been kicked out by Lukashenko, but are expected to return in the next few days.

"I can only say that, in my view, the goal was to destroy me physically, to make me commit a suicide by a termless hunger strike, to make my physical elimination look like my own decision to die. I’m afraid the same is happening with Siargey Kavalenka and other political prisoners," said Sannikov.

In early March, his wife Irina Khallip told EUobserver that she had lost hope of ever seeing her husband a free man. She was allowed a visit in January where she described him as someone who had spent 10 years in Stalin's gulag.

A curfew and travel ban was also imposed on Khallip, who was confined to house arrest at her 13-floor apartment in central Minsk along with their five-year old son. "The only thing that could help is serious economic sanctions," she said.

In January, she said her husband had been forced to write a letter to Lukashenko asking for freedom.

EU enlargement commissioner Stefan Fule said on Sunday the release of the two men is a first step, but warned that normalising ties with the country requires freeing all political prisoners.

"The release of Mr Sannikov and Mr Bandarenka is a fundamental first step one would naturally expect - especially in a situation when the head of state promised to pardon those who asked for it. Although personally I think it is against the principles of modern Europe and against human dignity to force people to admit what they never did, when their only "crime" was expressing their own opinion,” said the commissioner.

EU foreign policy chief Catherine Asthon described the men as “prominent symbols” for a democratic and European Belarus. She too is calling on the Belarus authorities for the unconditional release of all remaining political prisoners.

Nickolaj Nielsen, EUobserver