Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-05-22-Speech-4-184"
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"en.20080522.29.4-184"2
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"Madam President, Commissioner, the Members of the European Parliament who are concerned with the issue of Belarus and who are monitoring the situation in Belarus are faced with contradictory information. On the one hand there is the desire that has been publicly and officially declared to normalise relations with the European Union. The opening of the representative office of the European Commission in Minsk is a symbol of this desire.
On the other hand, in the same month, the police brutally attacked demonstrators who wanted to celebrate the nineteenth anniversary of the country’s independence. The following day the authorities sent KGB special forces to independent journalists. A month later the activists were handed down long sentences and this is not even the opposition, just people who dared to demonstrate in defence of citizens’ rights and the rights of small businesses, such as Andrei Kim or Sergei Parsukiewicz. We have also recently heard that Alexander Milinkiewicz was arrested and fined just for meeting Belarus citizens and for discussing public issues with them. Alexander Kazulin, the most important political prisoner, a prisoner of conscience in contemporary Europe, is still in prison.
Speaking as the chairman of the Belarus delegation I would like to see the day when we can put forward a Resolution to the European Parliament that notes with satisfaction that changes have taken place in Belarus to make that country part of the civilised European Community.
Unfortunately this will not happen today. Without any guarantees for the fundamental rights of free and democratic elections, to express one’s political opinions, freedom of the press and freedom to practise one’s religion, there is no possibility that the European Union should ever recognise the regime in Belarus as a country with which it is worth cooperating, or as a country that it is worth helping. We shall never support the policies that are practised by Alexander Lukashenko. We shall, however, support independent citizens’ groups and individual citizens from Belarus in their contacts with the European Union in the hope that one day the country will return to normality."@en1
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