Belarus has a long way to go

The Nordic Council, the Baltic Assembly and a wide range of other organisations and stakeholders were represented in Vilnius, Lithuania, for this year’s Belarus seminar.

The main topic on the agenda was the current political situation in the former Soviet state. Parliamentarians and representatives of political organisations from a range of other countries also provided input into discussions about the 2016 elections and about Alexander Lukashenko's role as president. They included the Council of Europe’s Belarus observer, Andrea Rigoni (Italy), the chair of the European Parliament delegation for relations with Belarus, Bogdan Andrzej Zdrojewski (Poland), its former chair, Senator Bogdan Klich (also Poland) and Jānis Vucāns (Latvia).

Breaches of human rights

The was a broad consensus among the many participants on the question of whether Belarus complies with international and European standards of democracy and human rights. The answer was a resounding “no” – underpinned by arguments from representatives of the opposition in the country, the Vice-President of the OSCE, Kent Härstedt (Sweden), and others.

President Lukashenko has run Belarus since 1994 and has consistently been accused of operating a dictatorship and violating human rights. One result of these accusations is that Belarus has been excluded from the Council of Europe. 

After the relatively peaceful presidential election this year, a number of European organisations have been discussing whether it is time to resume contact with the authorities in Minsk. The seminar provided a great deal of input into this debate.