Condemning the Elections in Belarus
Floor Speech
Madam President, much of the world's recent attention has understandably been on the Middle East--and of course this week on the terrible situation with one of America's closest allies--Japan. I understand that USAID has sent disaster relief teams to help in the earthquake and tsunami devastated cities and that the U.S. aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan is off the coast to help with relief operations.
Events there are truly heartbreaking and we stand in solidarity with our Japanese friends during this time of continued crisis and rebuilding.
Amid these major global events I want to make sure we don't lose sight of the continuing political repression in the last dictatorship of Europe--Belarus.
You see, despite the transformations that swept through eastern and central Europe following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Belarus remains stuck in time under the tyranny of Alexander Lukashenko, who has ruled the country with an iron fist for most of the last two decades.
Lukashenko's security forces that help prop up his illegitimate regime are actually still called the KGB--and they have the same despicable tactics as the old Soviet KGB.
Under Lukashenko's regime, those who dare to speak up against the government or attempt to participate in any semblance of democratic activity find themselves arrested, beaten, or worse.
In December, six of the seven candidates who chose to run against Lukashenko were arrested on election day when protesting the sham electoral process. Some were beaten and one, Vladimir Nekliaev, was even yanked out of a hospital and taken for interrogation by Lukashenko's KGB henchmen.
Over 600 other protesters were also arrested.
I had the opportunity to visit Belarus some weeks after the election and meet with the family members of these brave candidates and activists and I must tell you, it was a very moving experience.
I want to tell you about Milana Mikhalevich a 34-year-old mother of two, whose husband Ales was a Presidential candidate.
She told me of her harassment by Belarusian officials since her husband's arrest; how they denied her access to see him or even exchange letters. Any attorneys brave enough to defend him faced disbarment or criminal charges.
As she described this Lukashenka nightmare, Milana's 14-month-old daughter Alena scrambled around her feet--her father held somewhere in a Lukashenka KGB nightmare.
Just a few weeks ago Ales was finally released from detention. He promptly issued a statement detailing the abuse and torture that he endured in his 2-month KGB detention, including being beaten, stripped naked, and hung by his hands.
He said that following his torture he was forced to sign a document in which he pledged to cooperate, noting ``after my joints crunched I did all they wanted.''
Madam President, can anyone believe this kind of barbarism is still happening in Europe?
At the end of January, following repeated condemnations of the December election and demands for the release of all political prisoners, the United States and the European Union imposed targeted travel and financial sanctions on Lukashenko and his group of enablers.
Tragically, since then, Lukashenko's KGB has continued daily raids on the homes and offices of those suspected of ties to the democratic opposition, human rights organizations, or independent media.
Lukashenko has ignored election monitor reports questioning the credibility of the election and international demands to release all political prisoners. He has pulled his country even further into isolation and made it the subject of international scorn.
Following the old Soviet playbook, his government has tried to blame outside forces and other countries--everyone but Lukashenko himself--for the shameful political mess he has created.
You may have read his very troubling interview recently in the Washington Post in which he brazenly claimed ``We told you clearly that there is no less democracy in Belarus than there is in the United States'' and that despite the international condemnation and sanctions, he would order the same arrests and repression on election night all over again given the chance.
Just last week his government formally sentenced a number of protesters to terms of between 3-4 years in a high security prison. Others still face trials and possible 15 year sentences.
That is why last week, Senators Lieberman, McCain, Cardin, Shaheen, Graham, Kyl, Barrasso, Mark Udall, Kirk, Lautenberg and I submitted a Senate resolution on Belarus that, among other things:
Condemns the December election as illegitimate and fraudulent and calls for new elections that are genuinely democratic; calls for the immediate release of all political prisoners in Belarus and an end to the harassment of their families and lawyers; and urges the U.S. and the EU to expand the list of Belarussian officials and their families responsible for maintaining Lukashenko's rein of tyranny to be subject to travel and asset sanctions.
The resolution also calls on the International Ice Hockey Federation to suspend its 2014 International World Ice Hockey championship to be hosted in Minsk, Belarus until all political prisoners are released.
No such distinguished international sport championship should be awarded to Lukashenko's dictatorship while political prisoners are rotting away and being tortured in his secret KGB prisons.
Madam President, the people of Belarus only want the same basic freedoms that so many of us take for granted--and that so many are protesting for in the Middle East--the freedom to choose one's own government, to be free from indiscriminate arrest and torture, and to speak and debate issues freely within a democratic process.
We in the Senate owe the Belarusian people nothing less than to stand in solidarity with them as they continue their struggle.
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