EU must step up pressure on Alexander Lukashenko's regime in Belarus
A year has passed since the corrupt election, and 'Europe's last dictator' remains in power.
Belarus' President Alexander Lukashenko | Siarhei Leskiec/AFP via Getty Images
By Pavel Latushko
August 9, 2021	4:02 am
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Pavel Latushko is the former Belarus minister of culture. He heads National Anti-Crisis Management and is a member of the Presidium of the Coordination Council of Belarus.
It is precisely one year ago today that the Belarusian people voted Alexander Lukashenko out of office. Yet instead of a modern state based on rule of law, they have been faced with 12 months of violence, censorship and expanding political repression. But despite everything, political change in Belarus remains inexorable, and it is time to up the pressure.
The desire to remove "Europe's last dictator" had nothing to do with geopolitics; it was not connected to Russia or the West. The truth was far simpler.
Belarusians had simply become fed up with Lukashenko's secretive, autocratic government. What they wanted was what people everywhere in the world want, and deserve — a government that is honest and accountable.
The increasingly absurd and criminal nature of the Lukashenko regime became apparent once more on Sunday last week, when Krystsina Tsimanouskaya, an athlete on the Belarus Olympic team in Tokyo, dared to criticize her coaching staff. In return, she was threatened with punishment back home, forced into a car and driven to the airport against her will.
In Lukashenko's playbook, this is the response to those who challenge authority on any grounds — political or not. Fearing for her safety in Belarus, Tsimanouskaya sought, and luckily obtained, protection from Japanese authorities and safe haven in the European Union. The International Olympic Committee has now stripped two Belarusian coaches of their accreditation.
Others have been less fortunate.
In Belarus itself, day after day, civilians are dragged into police vans and locked up. More than 35,000 peaceful protesters have already been detained and tortured. At least ten people have lost their lives. And civil society has effectively been outlawed.
Lukashenko's tactics for dealing with dissent and criticism even extend to foreign soil. There was the hijacking of the Ryanair flight in May and now, Lukashenko's cynical policy of transferring refugees from the Middle East to his country's border with Lithuania.
Just this week, Vitaly Shishov, a Belarusian activist based out of Ukraine, was found hanged in a park near his home in Kyiv. Shishov ran an NGO that helped his compatriots flee from persecution. Local police are now investigating the possibility of murder.
Add these together, and one thing is clear: This is a regime that has gone rogue, a state waging a campaign of terror and intimidation that is only growing in viciousness and knows neither moral nor territorial boundaries.
By now, it should be clear that neither the EU nor the wider world can escape the consequences of Lukashenko's actions and will need to act, if only to protect itself.
The latest round of EU sanctions is welcome. Belarusian civilians, too, will suffer adverse repercussions. But if that is needed to restrain the increasingly erratic Lukashenko, so be it.
It has also been said that EU sanctions risk driving Minsk into the arms of Moscow. However, it is not sanctions that are doing this but Lukashenko himself, asking Russia to help him stay in power.
So what should the EU do next?
It is vital for the EU to remain strong and extend and tighten sanctions where possible. It must continue to make clear, by all means, that a future with Lukashenko in power will be a future of international isolation and, therefore, a dead end. Also, more can and should be done to establish international legal mechanisms to hold those in Belarus who offend against human rights to account.
One powerful signal would be for the EU to officially recognize Svetlana Tikhanovskaya as the legitimate president of Belarus. And EU leaders must also invest more to convene a high-level international conference on Belarus, aimed at launching the inclusive political dialogue the country so badly needs.
It is by increasing international pressure on the regime, from all possible sides, that political change in Belarus will finally come. Some may doubt that the autocrat will ever go. They forget the determination of the Belarusian people, which I know has only grown stronger. It is now one year since the election. But the dictator's downfall is as inevitable as it was before.
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