Belarus: Paris urges Minsk to release “all unjustly detained political prisoners”

While the eyes of the world are on Ukraine, oppression continues silently in Belarus.

France urged the Belarusian authorities on Thursday to release "all political prisoners unjustly detained" at the time of the trial of several collaborators of the information site Tut.by, the country's main independent media.

This trial, in particular of the editor-in-chief Marina Zolotova and the director general Lioudmila Tchekina, "confirms the incessant hardening of the repression against the free media, in violation of the international commitments made by Belarus", reacted François Delmas, spokesperson of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs during a press briefing.

“We again call for the release of all political prisoners unjustly detained,” he added.

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The trial began on Monday behind closed doors in this former Soviet republic, the Belarusian human rights center Viasna said.

It comes in the context of the ongoing wave of repression since a vast protest movement in 2020 to denounce the controversial re-election of authoritarian leader Alexander Lukashenko.

Several opponents arrested

Tut.by covered the protest, which gathered tens of thousands on the streets of Minsk and other cities for weeks.

François Delmas also deplored the arrest of opponent Andrei Dmitriev, "after other candidates for the 2020 presidential election".

This new arrest “demonstrates the continuation of the oppression of the Belarusian authorities against democracy”, he underlined.

“We condemn the continued repression which is hitting men and women engaged in civic life more and more harshly and which extends to those who demand free elections,” he added.

Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna met on October 6 with Svetlana Tikhanovskaïa, a figure of the Belarusian opposition.

She then assured him of "France's support for the fight of the Belarusian opposition for democracy and peace, more than two years after the fraudulent election of August 9, 2020", finally underlined François Delmas.