Maryna Lobava: Milinkevich doesn't care about political prisoners

The position of Aliaksandr Milinkevich cannot be explained otherwise than lobbying Lukashenka's interests.

Maryna Lobava, the mother of political prisoner Eduard Lobau, talked to charter97.org about Aliaksandr Milinkevich's call on the EU to lift sanctions.

“The matter is that Mr Milinkevich has never been in jail and doesn't know all 'pleasures' of prison life. I don't know why he was so lucky to escape it. He simply cannot understand what it is like being there not for a month or two, but for years. He seems not to care about political prisoners. The argument that economic sanctions affect ordinary people is ridiculous. A politician cannot afford such remarks,” the political prisoner's mother said.

She noted the economic state of the country depended not on sanctions of the European Union, but on how the Belarusian dictator robs people.

“It's difficult to explain this position of Aliaksandr Milinkevich with serious arguments other than lobbying Lukashenka's interests. How did he see the modernisation of 2009-2010, if there was a deep economic crisis in 2011? I don't understand what results of the dialogue he sees. Perhaps the result is that more than 30 people were thrown into prison and hundreds of people were punished administratively after the elections. I haven't seen that my relatives' or my economic state improved due to the modernisation and the dialogue. None plants have been upgraded and people's well-being has not been improved during these years. Mr Milinkevich probably looks at the world  through rose-colored glasses,” the woman is confident.

She stressed the EU didn't impose any tangible sanctions.

“It was enough to stop buying oil products for a week to release political prisoners. The matter is only few days, not months or years. Yes, the EU will suffer in some degree if serious economic sanctions are imposed, but Europe's pocket won't be hit as strongly as the pocket of the Belarusian regime. It should be taken into account that the EU is a union of almost 30 countries. Some of them are more dependent on economic relations with Belarus, but some are less. It's hard to reach a consensus in these conditions. This is the main reason for delaying a decision on sanctions. Visa restrictions, of course, affect some officials, but they know the ways to bypass them. I'd like to add that the EU blacklist doesn't cover all people who must be there,” Maryna Lobava said.

It should be reminded that the conference titled “European Dialogue on Modernisation with Belarusian Society” was held in Brussels yesterday. MEPs and representatives of Belarusian civil society discussed a wide range of issues.