Sanctions, Not Backdoor Trading

Lukashenka's bogus stories about political prisoners have always been false.

Special services have leaked information in some Belarusian media about an allegedly forthcoming exchange of political prisoners to the legitimisation of Lukashenka and the lifting of sanctions against his regime.

They even give the figure of 1000 political prisoners, who are supposedly to be released.

In this regard, I consider it necessary to clarify several points behind this false stories, because in 2011 and 2012, being a political prisoner, I myself experienced all these moves of the collective farm dictatorship.

Firstly, Lukashenka's bogus stories about political prisoners have always been false. The leaks were made in order to activate international crooks lobbying his interests in the West, and to increase pressure on the political prisoners themselves and their families.

Just imagine the feelings of the relatives of political prisoners, who perceive even blatant lies as hope. And imagine the feelings of relatives of those political prisoners, who are not recognized as political prisoners according to the will of Belarusian human rights activists, such as Mikalai Autukhovich.

Secondly, any easing of pressure on the regime after the start of behind-the-scenes negotiations with it leads to strengthening of repressions and growth of the number of political prisoners. Even a minimal recognition of the right to exist of criminals in power in Belarus leads to politically motivated killings, torture and impunity for these very criminals.

Thirdly, the leaks mean that Lukashenka is cornered and, with all his hatred towards political prisoners, is willing again to trade their lives to save his own, and will be ready to release some of them, but not the right ones and not in the numbers mentioned in the "leaked" information.

The only way to make all the political prisoners really free is to increase pressure on the regime, impose the toughest sanctions and eliminate any loopholes to circumvent them, especially on potassium fertilizers and oil products.

And finally, just in case it comes to the release of political prisoners, I would like to remind that, according to the European Belarus civil campaign, there are about 4,000 political prisoners in Belarus, nowhere near a little more than a thousand.

The leaders of European Belarus were at the origins of the human rights movement in Belarus. Their human rights activities are recognized with numerous international awards in the field of human rights protection. One of the first of them was the award of the European Union and the United States Government, given in 1998 to the Charter'97 civil initiative for significant contribution to the protection of human rights in Belarus.

As human rights activists we consider the figure of 4000 corresponds to the real situation of the political prisoners in Belarus and demand the international human rights organizations to be focused on this very figure.

Andrei Sannikov, coordinator of the European Belarus civil campaign, Facebook