Valiantsin Stefanovich: No all EU politicians want to notice what's going on in Belarus

The situation of political prisoner Mikalai Statkevich is very symptomatic.

It demonstrates that the Belarusian authorities, firstly, do not want to release political prisoners and, secondly, only imitate the dialogue with Europe. Valiantsin Stefanovich, the deputy head of Viasna human rights centre, says it about a new trial that the former presidential candidate is expected to stand.

He also mentioned the prosecution of political prisoner Mikalai Dziadok and a new criminal case against Yury Rubtsou, who has all chances to be thrown in prison.

“The Belarusian Foreign Ministry seems to have a task to take everything from the geopolitical situation around the Ukrainian conflict. No positive changes happen inside the country. We see that the authorities do not have the political will to carry out such changes”, the human rights defender says.

As Viasna representatives stressed earlier, the country's task ahead of the presidential elections is to prevent any social activity, which was repeated by Lukashenka several times. Pessimistic forecasts of human rights defenders begin to come true. Pressure on representatives of the human rights community is growing.

“The level of repression is growing even during the inactive political process in the country. We see attacks on human rights defenders in regions. Raids on homes of a journalist and human rights activists in Mahilou were organised not only in connection with a defamatory article about a company director published on a regional website. It was made to look for grounds for the further prosecution of the local human rights activists: the computer, which the police returned to its owner, was searched for such keywords as 'receipt', 'application', 'grant', 'report', 'Viasna', etc. The authorities again tried to discredit the Mahilou human rights centre. The situation of human rights defender Leanid Sudalenka in Homel, who is threatened with a criminal case, is illustrative”, Stefanovich says.

The human rights defender is confident that no positive changes can be expected at least before the presidential elections. In this regard, he regrets the fact that some EU officials pursue geopolitical interests and do not want to notice what is going on in Belarus.