Democratic countries call for immediate release of Belarusian political prisoners

February 9, Pozirk. All political prisoners in Belarus should be released immediately and unconditionally, says a joint statement submitted to the Permanent Council of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

Submitted by Ambassador Jocelyn Kinnear, Canada’s permanent representative to the OSCE, the statement represents the position of the Informal Group of Friends of Democratic Belarus. It includes Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Austria, Croatia, Czechia, Greece, Iceland, Italy, Montenegro, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Ukraine also aligned themselves with the statement.

“In recent weeks, we have once again heard credible reports of Belarus’ failure to meet its OSCE human dimension commitments,” it reads, noting a wave of politically-motivated persecution in late January that targeted former political prisoners, their family members and supporters.

“Like the brutal post-election crackdowns in 2020, these actions appear to be aimed at intimidating the people of Belarus in the lead up to scheduled parliamentary elections this month,” the statement stressed.

It noted the severity of reprisals and Belarus’ failure to meet its OSCE human dimension commitments, “particularly since the fraudulent elections of 2020 and the significant decline in the human rights situation which has followed.”

Minsk’s complicity in the Kremlin’s full-scale war on Ukraine “aggravated the human rights violations and also contributed to regional and international instability,” the statement stressed.

The ongoing crackdown on “almost all independent voices” may amount to crimes against humanity, it noted.