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Germany does not recognize the elections in Belarus and hopes that the country’s president, Alexander Lukashenko, will negotiate with the opposition and repeat the elections. If Lukashenko does not do this, more sanctions will follow, said German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas.
German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas threatened Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko with further strengthening of sanctions. He said so in a comment to the German newspaper Bild am Sonntag on September 5.
According to him, Germany, being a member of the European Union, does not recognize the elections in Belarus. The minister made it clear that he expects Lukashenka to negotiate with the opposition in Minsk and repeat the elections.
If Lukashenko does not react, more sanctions will follow, Maas said.
He added that Lukashenka must stop jailing and mistreating protesters immediately and respect human rights and freedom of the press.
Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia on August 31 were the first in the world to impose personal sanctions on the Belarusian authorities after the elections and the crackdown on peaceful protests in the country. The Baltic states have turned 30 Belarusian officials persona non grata, including the country’s current president, Alexander Lukashenko.
EU foreign ministers August 28 agreed to impose sanctions on top Belarusian officials due to electoral fraud and violence against protesters.
Ukraine will decide on sanctions against Belarus when the EU introduces restrictions, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said.
Lukashenko threatened to retaliate against countries that imposed sanctions against Belarus.
Since August 9, there have been massive protests in Belarus. The protesters believe that the results of the presidential elections, which were held from August 4-9, were falsified. According to official data, Lukashenka won with 80.1% of the voters. Opposition Svetlana Tikhanovskaya ranked second with 10.1% of the vote. The rest of the candidates earned less than 2%. At the same time, alternative exit polls showed the opposite picture: Tikhanovskaya’s confident victory.
The Belarusian security forces violently dispersed the demonstrations, in particular with the use of stun grenades, rubber bullets and water cannons. During the protests, more than 7,000 protesters were arrested (many of them have already been released), hundreds were injured and wounded. According to official figures, four protesters died.
173 people were arrested in protests in Belarus on August 30. According to human rights activists, the detainees included minors and a Russian citizen. According to the latest data from the country’s Interior Ministry, the security forces detained 41 people in the protests on September 4. About 30 more people, including journalists, were arrested at the student rally on September 5.
The EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, on behalf of the European Union, stated on August 11 that the elections in Belarus “were neither free nor fair” and that the authorities used “violence disproportionate and unacceptable “against the protesters.
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