Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda has said the EU should discuss sanctions against Belarusian government in response to the actions of the republic’s authorities against the opposition, Interfax-Ukraine reports.
“The current dynamics force us to seriously discuss sanctions against Belarus, because what is happening there now, even from a distance, does not resemble the repressions that the regime has carried out in recent years. We cannot turn a blind eye to this,” the portal delfi.lt quotes the President of Lithuania, as saying.
Mr. Nauseda stressed that Lithuania’s cooperation with the Belarusian authorities will depend on the human rights situation.
At the same time, representatives of the Belarusian opposition appealed to the international community with a request to respond to the violence against the citizens of Belarus and to impose sanctions against the regime of Alexander Lukashenko, whose victory in the presidential elections was officially announced in Minsk.
“Today we woke up in a new country. Lukashenka still retained power, but with this the country has already changed. Belarus has awakened and does not want to sleep anymore,” Olga Karach, head of the Belarusian international center for civil initiatives “Our Home” said in the Lithuanian Seim.
Representatives of the opposition addressed a statement to politicians, diplomats of the countries of Europe and the United States, and asked “in no case to forgive the shed blood of peaceful citizens of Belarus and to respond to this cruel reprisal,” Interfax-Ukraine reports.
The statement urged the international community to stop providing any assistance to the Belarusian regime, to impose personal sanctions against its representatives, to apply economic sanctions to state enterprises of Belarus.
According to preliminary data from the Central Election Commission of Belarus, 80.23% of voters backed Lukashenka in the presidential elections, 9.9% for Tikhanovskaya, 1.68% for Kanopatskaya, 1.04% for Dmitriev, 1.12% for Cherechnya, and 6.02% voted against all. The final election data should be announced by the end of the week.
Read also: Poland calls for extraordinary EU summit on Belarus.
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