Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-04-05-Speech-3-183"
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"en.20060405.18.3-183"2
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".
Mr President, I wish to begin by saying that it is a pleasure to see Mr Milinkevich here. We had a meeting this morning, so the day started well, and I heard directly what is in the hearts of the Belarusian people. Therefore, I think it was very important to have this discussion today, because we all have seen that the events in Minsk confirmed Mr Lukashenko’s determination to win this election come what may. I remember what Mr Milinkevich said to me today, that even if it seems that the elections were won by Mr Lukashenko, in reality the Belarusian people have won and Mr Lukashenko has started to lose the elections. This is very important for the future.
Unfortunately, this was exactly what we had expected. However, what was less expected was the degree to which the pluralistic forces were able to get together. I express my admiration for their courage. We hope that we will be able to continue to give as much support to the democratic forces as we can.
The OSCE/ODIHR official report concluded that the elections clearly failed to meet OSCE standards for democratic elections. This was due in particular to the arbitrary use of state power and widespread detention, a disregard for the basic rights of freedom of assembly, association and expression, and problems with early voting, counting and tabulation processes. It is clear that we all consider the elections to be fundamentally flawed. We particularly deplore the refusal to admit registered OSCE and EU parliamentary observers, including Members of the European Parliament. We have made this known.
We utterly condemn the violent suppression of protests and the detention of peaceful protesters, including Mr Kozulin, former Polish Ambassador Mr Maszkiewicz, and all the other unknown students, craftsmen and workers who took to the streets to demonstrate.
We fully support what the President-in-Office of the Council said – it is very important that we impose targeted sanctions that will not affect the population but will affect those responsible for the fraudulent elections. We must see what can be done. The Commission is involved in the preparations.
For the future, we must continue our support for civil society. We must continue this strategy, because we want to stand by the people and work for their benefit. However, at the same time, we do not want to work with the government – or at least, we want to work as little as we can with it.
In line with the Council conclusions, support for democratisation will continue through our different assistance tools. We also have been working particularly on the media front, because we know that it is highly important that people take their own decisions. The current TV and radio programmes supported by the EC make an important contribution to democratisation, but also to the EU’s visibility in Belarus, which we have discussed today. There is still much to be done – improvements must be made – but we must continue with those projects. I agree that we will have to see what we can do in looking for ways to support the students who were expelled from the universities. Perhaps not at the next Council, but in the near future, we will establish programmes and the Commission, together with the Council, will certainly support them.
We have already been financing Vilnius University, because Minsk has been closed, and we have tried to give the young people a chance. People-to-people contacts are most important in order to enhance the possibility of working together.
We must do everything against repression, on the one hand through declarations that we officially put out through the Council, and on the other hand by clearly speaking up in our meetings with the Russians, pointing out that we want a Belarus where human rights and the rule of law are respected."@en1
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