Foreign ministry summons EU chargé d’affaires over court visit

September 8, BPN. The foreign ministry has summoned chargé d’affaires Evelina Schulz to warn her against visiting Belarusian courts.

“Today, the EU’s chargé d’affaires was summoned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and once again warned that these provocative acts can have consequences. She was also informed that Belarus applied additional response measures to the EU delegation,” a spokesman for the ministry, Anatol Hłaz, told state-run news agency BelTA on September 8.

Schulz was briefly arrested on September 6 as she was leaving the Minsk City Court, where a closed-door trial in the so-called anarchists’ case took place. BelTA claimed that she tried to break into a courtroom.

“This is a fanfare, an absolutely clear and deliberate act of provocation. An attempt to push Belarus towards some more drastic steps,” Hłaz commented.

The Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, he continued, did not provide for sneaking into courts. According to him, Belarus explained the procedure for visiting Belarusian state bodies to the EU Delegation back in 2021.

The EU blasted Schulz’s detention as illegal and reportedly summoned a Belarusian diplomat in Brussels to clarify the incident.

The Minsk City Court on September 6 imposed lengthy prison sentences on two human rights defenders and eight anarchist activists. The Viasna Human Rights Center’s coordinator Marfa Rabkova was sentenced to 15 years in prison, and its volunteer Andrej Čapiuk to six.

Human rights groups say their persecution is politically motivated.