Canada and its allies on Friday called on Belarus to release the nearly 1,400 political prisoners being held in detention and laid new sanctions to mark the fourth anniversary of the country’s disputed presidential election.
The co-ordinated sanctions target Belarusian individuals and entities over what Canada and Britain said were human rights abuses committed against Belarusian citizens who protested after President Alexander Lukashenko declared victory in 2020.
A joint statement from Canada, the U.K., the United States and the European Union called that election “fraudulent.”
Additional sanctions laid by Canada, the U.K. and the U.S. also seek to put pressure on the Lukashenko regime for its support of Russia’s war in Ukraine.
“Today, we are sending a clear message to the Government of Belarus: Canada will not accept the Lukashenko regime’s blatant violations of human rights,” Foreign Minister Melanie Joly said in a statement.
“We will continue to work with our international partners to ensure that the voices of the people of Belarus are heard and to hold those who support Russia’s brutal and unjustifiable war against Ukraine accountable for their crimes.”
Most independent observers believe Lukashenko lost the 2020 election. He hung onto power by imprisoning thousands and crushing months of street protests with the help of his ally, Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Even before the election, Lukashenko’s regime had arrested opposition candidates, including activist Syarhei Tsikhanouski, who has since been sentenced to nearly 20 years in prison. His wife, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, ran in his place and fled to Europe after the vote, declaring herself the rightful winner and the leader of democratic Belarus.
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She told Global News in April that she hadn’t heard from her husband in over a year, which she said was part of a broader strategy to isolate prisoners to break their opposition to the regime.
More than 35,000 people were arrested in the 2020 crackdown on dissent, while other opposition figures fled the country. The human rights group Viasna says roughly 1,400 political prisoners are currently behind bars, and the group has called for the priority release of more than 30 of them.
Tsikhanouskaya and the families of other political prisoners have expressed disappointment after a major prisoner swap last week between Russia, the U.S. and Europe — the largest East-West exchange since the Cold War — did not include any Belarusian detainees.
The only prisoner freed from Belarus in the Aug. 1 swap was Rico Krieger, a German medical worker who was arrested there last year on terrorism charges. He was among 16 imprisoned westerners and Russian dissidents traded for eight Russians held abroad.
“Lukashenko is afraid of freeing political prisoners; he’s holding them hostage,” Tsikhanouskaya told The Associated Press on Thursday. “He’s probably feeling insecure and is afraid of showing weakness. He may fear that releasing political prisoners will encourage Belarusians to fight.”
Tatsiana Khomich, the sister of imprisoned opposition activist Maria Kolesnikova, told the AP she believes it’s “obvious that neither Belarus nor Belarusian prisoners are a priority for Western partners.”
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre acknowledged the “incredibly difficult decisions” made during prisoner release negotiations when asked about similar comments from Belarusian families Wednesday, adding that the Biden administration will continue to advocate for the release of all wrongfully detained prisoners abroad.
U.S. National Security Council spokesperson Sean Savett said Washington “remains deeply concerned” about Lukashenko’s crackdown.
Joly announced Ottawa was imposing sanctions against 10 individuals and six entities in Belarus, including judges who sentenced protesters to jail terms and a state-owned entity that Canada says suppressed its employees’ right to protest the election, and intimidated and fired workers who took part in the rallies.
The joint statement from Canada, the U.S., the U.K. and the EU said the allies will consider additional sanctions and other options “to hold accountable those who enable the Lukashenko regime’s suppression of democracy in Belarus.”
Other individuals and entities sanctioned Friday are accused of co-ordinating and facilitating military production and repairs on behalf of Russia.
Lukashenko, who this year marked three decades in power, allowed Russian troops to use Belarus’s territory to invade Ukraine in 2022 and has let Moscow deploy some tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus.
The U.S. sanctions were imposed on 19 individuals, 14 entities and “one aircraft,” the Treasury Department said Friday, that have supported Moscow through military production and the shipment of goods. The department said the sanctions also target people involved in sanctions evasion on behalf of Belarusian defence entities and revenue generation for people in Lukashenko’s inner circle.
“As Belarus marks another year under Lukashenko’s rule, the regime’s blatantly corrupt, destabilizing, and anti-democratic acts — along with its continued support for Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine — have only further ostracized Belarus from the global community,” the department’s undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, Bradley Smith, said in a statement.
The department added that Lukashenko’s support for Putin’s invasion has come “at a high cost” by trading “his country’s autonomy and standing in the international community for his and his cronies’ own financial and political benefits.”
Britain sanctioned four individuals and three entities for both human rights violations over what it called the “deeply flawed” 2020 election and Belarus’s support for the Ukraine war.
— with files from The Associated Press and Reuters
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