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Protest against Lukashenko: The Belarusian activist Jana Shostak stands in front of the office of the EU Commission in Warsaw
Photo: SLAWOMIR KAMINSKI / Agencja Gazeta via REUTERS
The EU states have agreed on extensive new sanctions against supporters of the Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko.
The agreement envisages imposing EU entry bans on 78 people and freezing existing assets in the EU.
According to the German Press Agency, at least seven properties are also affected, for example government agencies or companies.
With the punitive measures, the EU is responding to the ongoing repression against civil society and the democratic opposition in Belarus.
Some of those affected are also accused of participating in the illegal and dangerous arrest of the blogger Roman Protassewitsch, who is critical of the government, from an EU perspective.
Further sanctions could follow
Belarusian authorities had forced a Ryanair passenger plane flying from Athens to Vilnius to make a stopover in Minsk.
Protassevich, who was traveling on the plane, and his girlfriend Sofia Sapega were arrested there.
The agreement reached by the permanent representatives of the EU states on the sanctions is to be officially confirmed by the Union's foreign ministers on Monday.
Then the names of those affected will also be published in the EU Official Journal.
The additionally planned economic sanctions against Belarus are still in progress.
They could hit the country's potash and oil industries as well as the financial sector.
According to a report in the Financial Times, Lukashenko is reacting to Western sanctions by directing migrants from Iraq and Syria via Lithuania to the European Union.
The autocratic system used the refugees "as a weapon" to put the EU under pressure, said Lithuania's Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis.
Since the presidential election on August 9 last year, Belarus has protested against Lukashenko, who has been in power for almost 27 years.
Triggers are allegations of falsifying the election, after which Lukashenko had been declared the winner with 80.1 percent of the votes.
The protests have already resulted in several deaths, hundreds of injuries and thousands of arrests.
Human rights activists criticize torture in Belarusian prisons.
Punitive measures have been in place for a long time against Lukashenko and dozens of other supporters.
lau / dpa / AFP