On the 10th of April the European Union has officially introduced sanctions against the Belarusian president Aliaksandr Lukashenka and 30 high-ranking officials. All of them are non grata persons in the EU countries. (11-APR-06)
According to www.charter97.org
EU Council Decision.
This decision was passed by the EU Council at the meeting of the foreign ministers of the union’s 25 member states. The head of the Belarusian KGB, Justice Minister, Prosecutor General, the Chairman of the lower chamber of ‘parliament’, the head of the presidential staff, the head of the Central Electoral Committee and others were entered in the list. Visa ban is introduced for a year, and can be prolonged later.
Up to EU Parliament’s resolution, Belarusian elections were determined as not due
to international democratic standards; it requests holding of the second elections, release of all the opposition’s activists who were arrested during the electoral campaign and discontinuance of dissentients’ persecution. Earlier the deputies of the EU offered to expand the list not entry persons to several hundreds of names, including those who have attitude towards the falsification of the March voting’ results and took part in repressions against opposition’ actions activists, but this proposal is still to be considered.
Up till now, except Lukashenka, the Internal Affairs Minister Uladzimir Navumau, the Security Council Secretary Viktar Shejman, special tasks police regiment commander Yury Padabed and the SOBR Commander Dzmitry Paulichenka were among the non grata persons banned from entering the EU.
ÅÑ refused to use economical sanctions against Belarus, because it will turn against Belarus citizens’ well-being.
“Crusade against Belarus”
As we have informed, according to the EU and OSCE, elections held on March 19 in Belarus fell short of international democratic norms.
Aliaksandr Lukashenka called EU countries’ and some neighbors’ actions as «crusade against Belarus”.
“It is strange that there is someone who wants to humble our country, this island of stability, and convert it to one more testing ground of coloured convulsions. Known countries try to export foreign technologies of destructions to our country under the pretence of ‘democratic values’-said Lukashenka
On the 8th of April there was Aliaksandr Lukashenka’s inauguration to the 3rd presidential term.
No one leader of foreign countries was in Minsk for this solemnity.