Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko yesterday said that some of his political opponents had “chosen” to go to prison as he cast his vote in an election that was set to extend his 31-year rule.
Lukashenko, 70, held a long news conference during which he was asked how the vote could be free and fair, given that all the main opposition figures are in jail or have fled the country.
“Some chose prison, some chose ‘exile,’ as you say. We didn’t kick anyone out of the country,” he said.
Photo: Reuters
Lukashenko said no one was prevented from speaking out in Belarus, but prison was “for people who opened their mouths too wide, to put it bluntly, those who broke the law.”
The US and the EU both described yesterday’s election as a sham, given the repression of political opponents and the banning of independent media.
“This is a blatant affront to democracy,” EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Kaja Kallas said on the eve of the vote.
Exiled opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya last week said that Lukashenko was engineering his re-election as part of a “ritual for dictators.”
Lukashenko shrugged off the criticism as meaningless and said it was irrelevant to him whether the West decided to recognize the election or not.
The EU and the US both said they did not recognize him as the legitimate leader of Belarus after he used his security forces to crush mass protests following the previous election in 2020, when Western governments backed Tsikhanouskaya’s claim that he had falsified the results to cheat her of victory.
Tens of thousands of people were arrested. Human rights group Viasna, which is banned as an “extremist” organization, said there are still about 1,250 political prisoners.
Lukashenko said he had freed many people, referring to more than 250 pardons he has issued in the past year.
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