Belarus needs stronger support from Europe and America, if democracy is to prevail
On International Holocaust Memorial Day, Roger Casale, Secretary General, New Europeans and Olga Kostukevich, New Europeans Minsk share eye-witness reports from inside Belarus and argue the country urgently needs more help from its friends, especially from Europe.
Published on 27 January 2021 at 09:30
Three years ago, German President Frank Steinmeier attended the opening of a memorial to Maly Trostenets, the largest Nazi concentration camp on the territory of the old USSR. It was the first time a German President had ever visited Belarus.
Today, at Slutsk, 97 km south of Minsk, the Lukashenko regime is building a new detention centre. An eye-witness described it as “some kind of military unit, where prisoners are led past men in uniform, standing ten paces apart, holding a machine gun or a dog on a leash.”
MIL-OSI Baltics: Amnesty International: Leaked audio allegedly exposing top Interior Minister official ordering use of illegal force against peaceful protesters must be effectively investigated foreignaffairs.co.nz - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from foreignaffairs.co.nz Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
15 January 2021, 17:19 UTC
Reacting to the publication of an audio recording, in which one of the most senior Interior Ministry officials in Belarus apparently gives criminal orders to police to use unlawful force against peaceful protesters and disregard international law, Amnesty International said:
“Of the string of incriminating leaks showing that Belarusian authorities crushed peaceful protest through pre-meditated human rights violations, this recording – if authentic – is the most damning. It must be immediately, impartially and effectively investigated,” said Denis Krivosheev, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for Eastern Europe and Central Asia.
“If a top-level police officer is telling his force to target rubber bullets at testicles, stomachs and faces, and if he is proposing the creation of internment camps for the most active protesters, plus implying that their deaths would merely rid the country of people it does not need, then under international l