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Of: TT
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Photo: Tut. By way AP / TT
Opposition leader Maria Kolesnikova faces several years in prison after being kidnapped and detained in connection with the protests. Archive photography as of August 30.
Belarusian opposition leader Maria Kolesnikova is accused of endangering the security of Belarus and faces up to five years in prison.
The opposition includes people within the security apparatus in order to hold them accountable in the future.
Kolesnikova disappeared in Minsk on September 7 and witnesses recounted how masked men forced her into a van. Then she and two other opposition figures showed up at the border with Ukraine, where she tore up her passport so that Belarusian security services would not force her to leave the country.
After this, Kolesnikova was placed in a kind of detention center. Belarus’s special investigating authority is now bringing formal criminal charges against her, alleging that she incited acts intended to harm national security, “through the media and the Internet.” For such a crime, one can be punished with up to five years in prison.
I do not regret
The opposition leader is being detained in the northwestern Belarusian city of Zhodzina and is doing well under the circumstances, her lawyer told Russia’s Interfax news agency. At first, she did not have access to her medication, among other things, but this must have been fixed.
– Maria wants people to know that she does not regret for a moment having done what she did and why she ended up here, says lawyer Ljudmila Kazak according to Interfax.
The main human rights organizations in Belarus are calling for the immediate release of Kolesnikova and two other opposition figures, Maksim Znak and Illja Salej. Criminal investigations are politically motivated and are only aimed at stopping your political activities, they write in an open letter.
“Expressing one’s opinion and demanding dialogue between society and the authorities cannot be a crime in a democratic society,” they write.
Include security people on blacklists
Another Belarusian opposition leader, Maria Tichanovskaya, has announced that an alleged blacklist of Belarusian authorities is being drawn up, for example through violence or extrajudicial kidnappings.
The list will be published and sent to the governments of various countries, according to Tichanovskaya, who has been in exile in neighboring Lithuania since the days after the controversial elections.
“I urge the security forces to stop the violence and unite with the Belarusian people. If they do not do so, they will not escape justice and punishment,” he said in a statement to AFP.
European Marshall Plan?
The EU should be ready to help a free Belarus with a kind of Marshall Plan, according to the so-called Visegrad countries (Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary). If the country holds democratic elections, Europe should offer the equivalent of just over 10 billion crowns for Belarus to rebuild quickly, says Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, according to Reuters.
Morawiecki will propose this at the EU summit next week.
The Baltic states have previously blacklisted Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko and a long list of top officials in the country. The EU is preparing sanctions.
Meanwhile, Lukashenko is receiving financial support from Russia. Earlier this week, he received a life preserver in the form of a loan for the equivalent of just over 13 billion Swedish crowns.
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