Lukashenka deprives Belarusians of EU’s support

Belarus has a real chance to join new programmes of Brussels for Eastern partners, but Lukashenka needs to release political prisoners and carry out free democratic elections for this.
Representatives of the United Democratic Forces of Belarus have said it today on a press conference, Radio Svaboda reports.
The meetings in Brussels, where the European Parliament gathered political figures from Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine and the delegation of the United Democratic Forces of Belarus, showed: the EU intends to pay more attention and resources then before to the Eastern European countries.
“About 12 billion euro will be given for the Eastern Europe for the nearest years, by 2013. A question arises: what about Belarus? They are different spheres of cooperation – economic, humanitarian and exchanges. It is the great number of programmes. And Belarus has a chance to join these programmes in order it will for the help of the Belarusians. But if all political issues remain without changes, these huge facilities can by-pass Belarus,” Anatol Lyabedzka states.
If these opportunities are not used, it is the Belarusian official authorities who will be responsible for it, Sayrhei Kalyakin, participant of the trip, emphasises.
“The authorities have the ball now. The people, who are losing mush because the authorities are so die-hard and uncompromising, should think about it. They don’t want to release political prisoners, don’t want to perform their duties on holding free and justice elections. But common people, not authorities, lose,” Syarhei Kalyakin says.
Vintsuk Vyachorka, who visited Brussels, noted: Belarusian ambassador in Belgium hadn’t been invited to the debates. The co-head of the UDF thinks it is an alarming fact.
“Brussels has serious claims both to the Belarusian parliament and the executive power. So the official Minsk should think of it seriously. Hopes that the European Parliament and the European Commission will play games, level down the demand for the official authorities, have failed. All previous demands remain in force,” Vintsuk Vyachorka said.
It should be reminded that the European Union connects the improving of relations with the official Minsk and Belarus’s participation in the Neighbourhood Policy programme, which would allow the Belarusian to get cheap or free Schengen visas, with fulfilling of the 12 offers of the European Union for Belarus. The main points of the offers are release of all political prisoners, stopping politically motivated persecution of people and holding free elections.
Meanwhile, there are several prisoners who remain behind the bars in Belarus today. Among them are the former presidential candidate Alyaksandr Kazulin, sentenced to 5.5 years of imprisonment for staging a mass rally of protest against rigged results of the presidential elections; a young activist Andrei Kim and one of the leaders of the entrepreneurs’ movement Syarhei Parsyukevich, who have been sentenced to 1.5 and 2.5 years of imprisonment for participation in the protest rally of market vendors on January 10, 2008 in Minsk. Besides, 12 more activists of the democratic movement were sentenced to different terms of restriction of freedom and large fines for participation in that rally.