Greetings to All Those Longing for a Talk with Lukashenka

The story of one correspondence.

The sensational investigative movie of Deutsche Welle confirming Lukashenka's involvement in the murder of his opponents shows his trip to Austria at the invitation of the Austrian president. This was the first visit of the dictator to a European country over 23 years. There was no visit to Italy in 2016, although the dictator's propagandists claim the opposite. There was a visit to the Vatican via Italy. The meeting in Austria was organized at a time when there was no government formed after the elections. The first EU country to invite the dictator seemed to shy away from this invitation.

Alexander Van der Bellen, called Sascha, became the president of Austria in 2016, defeating Norbert Hofer, a candidate from the right-wing Austrian Freedom Party (AFP). He won twice, due to procedural violations in May, the second round of elections was rerun in December. Europe welcomed his victory, which stopped the populists.

I saw Van der Bellen in May 2018 in Tallinn at the Lennart Meri Conference. He spoke about democracy, human rights, the need to protect freedom and the rights of each individual. In general, he is a good European politician.

I already knew that he was going to come to Belarus for the memorial ceremony in Maly Trostenets. It's the place where the monument to ten thousand Austrian Jews killed by the Nazis was erected. Lukashenka invited him, and he accepted the invitation, as he believed he had to honour the memory of his fellow citizens. It was useless to convince him that it's not appropriate to honour the deceased at the invitation and in the company of the criminal.

Nevertheless, I considered it necessary to warn the President of Austria about how Lukashenka's propaganda would play his visit. I told about the situation with human rights, Kurapaty, and asked not to turn the working visit into an official one, the Belarusian side longed for. The President listened to me and said that his trip would include only the mourning ceremony and should not be considered as a gesture of recognition of the dictatorship. We agreed that I would write to him.

I wrote a letter, told about human rights violations, the adopted resolution of the European Parliament condemning these violations, the persecution of leaders of independent trade unions, the illegal "law on parasites," the persecution of independent journalists, bloggers and the blockage of the Charter'97.

Van der Bellen arrived in Belarus in June 2018. He and German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier were present at the mourning ceremony. The German president was the author of the same formula for Ukraine. Later I received a response from the Austrian president through his office.

The reply said that the president was aware of my concern about the situation in Belarus. He also confirmed his non-official involvement in the ceremony and denied any official visits to Belarus for the foreseeable future.

But a year later, Austria decides to be the first European country to welcome Lukashenka with an official visit.

On the eve of this visit, I wrote again to the President of Austria about the role he assumed by inviting a dictator suspected of political assassinations. Besides, the visit was planned on the eve of the "elections," which have been falsified in Belarus by order of Lukashenka.

I haven't received an answer. Perhaps, the answer was the question about Lukashenka's murdered opponents. He ignored this question at the conference.

Anyway, Lukashenka visited Austria, spoke offensively, gave a lesson of unreasonable democracy. He returned home and blatantly falsified the elections. It was done with the acquiescence of the president of Austria.

President Van der Bellen keeps believing he is a quite democratic European politician, sharing humanistic values, talking about human rights and individual freedom. Did he forget that Zakharenka, Hanchar, Krasovski, Zavadski were also individuals with the right to life and freedom?

He might not think that he would become the first European politician to welcome a criminal gang from Belarus headed by Lukashenka in a democratic country.

Austria might not attach importance to it, but democratic Belarus considers the image of Van der Bellen tarnished.

They can ignore us and take care only of their business. However, Deutsche Welle proved the dictator's involvement in political murders.

Greetings to all those longing for talk with Lukashenka.

Andrei Sannikov, Facebook