Andrei Sannikov: Paleckis plays dirty game

The leader of European Belarus civil campaign condemns the remarks by a European Parliament member on Minsk's alleged readiness to release political prisoners.

The European Parliament Rapporteur on Belarus is paying a visit to Minsk on March 18-21 to collect information for his report for a plenary sitting of the EP. Justas Paleckis said after meetings with officials that Lukashenka's regime was ready to free the political prisoners.

“It is an attempt to pacify public opinion, first of all, in Europe. It is not clear why Paleckis got involved in this dirty game. We know how pressure on all political prisoners has increased today. I can say with certainty: Everything they have faced can be called torture. The spineless policy of such politicians as Paleckis only intensifies torture,” European Belarus civil campaign leader and former presidential candidate Andrei Sannikov, who spent 18 months in prison after the Belarusian presidential elections of December 19, 2010, said to charter97.org.

According to Sannikov, he met with European politicians, including those who visited Minsk, and can say they know about the real confinement conditions for political prisoners.

“I was surprised to hear, and this news filled me with disgust, that the authorities even boast they are torturing political prisoners  and like to tell their foreign partners about it. The recent attempts of human trafficking with the dictatorship made by European politicians lie beyond morality. The matter is human lives. Without a principled position, their lives are under constant threat,” the politician said.