By Reuters Staff
(Adds details on numbers detained, Blinken quote)
WASHINGTON, April 19 (Reuters) - The United States on Monday revoked an authorization for certain transactions with nine sanctioned Belarusian state-owned enterprises over alleged human rights violations and abuses in the Eastern European country.
“This action is a further consequence of the Belarusian authorities’ flagrant disregard for human rights and Belarus’ failure to comply with its obligations under international human rights law,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement.
The U.S. Treasury Department on Monday issued a new license allowing the wind-down of transactions involving the companies, which include state energy firm Belneftekhim, until June 3.
U S says Belarusian state firms license revoked due to rights abuses
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US Continues to Ignore Key Accountability Tool for Democratic Crisis in Belarus
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Year 2020 in Review: The Saga of a Bitterly Divided Belarusian Society
Publication: Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 18 Issue: 2
(Source: Getty Images)
At the beginning of 2020, Belarus was becoming increasingly assertive and willing to resist Russian pressure tactics (see EDM, January 14, 2020). And that assessment remained valid at least until late May. Against the background of Belarus and Russia’s lingering oil price dispute, US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo visited Minsk, on February 1, and declared that the United States could satisfy Belarus’s entire petroleum demand. Also that month, the first analysis of the Belarusian economy by the banker Victor Babariko was publicly released: the document pointedly described Belarus as a drug addict that needed to wean itself off Russian aid. Even Nobel laureate Svetlana Alexievich, invariably critical of Alyaksandr Lukashenka, opined that at present, the Belarusian president’s personal interest matches “ours” as it boils do