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Of: TT
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Photo: Dmitri Lovetsky / AP / TT
A drone appears in the sky over the Belarusian capital, Minsk, during a demonstration critical of the regime on August 23. The old white-red flag of the country is used as a symbol by the opposition.
Lithuania has stopped paying EU funds to Belarus due to concerns that the neighboring country’s regime is using the money against its own people. At the same time, even more EU countries are withdrawing their ambassadors from Belarus.
The EU has a program where money is sent from Brussels to Belarus for the purchase of, among other things, drones. The objective is to strengthen the surveillance capacity against human trafficking and illegal migratory flows in border areas with the EU countries Lithuania and Latvia.
In recent days, however, fears have been raised that President Alexander Lukashenko’s struggling regime in Minsk is using drones in mass protests across the country and making life miserable for opposition figures.
Tautvydas Tamulevicius, Lithuania’s deputy interior minister, now claims that Vilnius has frozen new payments to Minsk within the 5.8 million euro program (just over 60 million crowns).
– The decision was made at the risk of money being wasted, he says.
“Safety of people”
According to Tamulevicius, no money will be paid until the European Commission has clarified the matter.
Thousands of people have been arrested in Belarus since the presidential elections on August 9, and there are many reports of beatings and torture in detention centers and police custody.
On Thursday, some 40 EU parliamentarians called on the Lithuanian and Brussels authorities to “thoroughly investigate” the problem of surveillance drones.
“Bureaucratic implementation of project activities, while ignoring the situation on the ground, could endanger the security of the Belarusian people,” the parliamentarians wrote in an open letter.
Ambassadors are called home
Not least Poland and Lithuania have questioned that Lukashenko actually won the election, and on Friday Minsk called his ambassadors home from there.
As a result, Poland and Lithuania withdrew their ambassadors from Minsk on Tuesday, and Estonia and Latvia did the same on Wednesday. Now the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Bulgaria are also doing the same.
“The measures taken by the Belarusian authorities against other EU states are unacceptable. The EU remains united in its support for the people of Belarus,” Slovak Foreign Minister Ivan Korcok wrote on Twitter.
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