Van 29 tot 31 maart vond in Tallinn de jaarlijkse Lennart Meri conferentie plaats. Lennart Merui was de eerste preisdent van Estland. In de workshop over Wit-Rusland waren Andrei Sannikov van European Belarus en Irina Krasovskaya van We Remember de vertegenwoordigers van Wit-Rusland. Charta 97 heeft Irina over de conferentie een aantal vragen gesteld.

Bron: www.charter97.org

Iryna, what have you discussed with the politicians you met during the conference in Tallinn?

Above all, I wanted to get across a message that only cosmetic changes are taking place in our country, and they do not influence the situation in general. While so much attention is paid to Belarus today in Europe, a question suggests itself about conditions which the regime is to fulfill in order to become a participant of the programs offered to it. These conditions are simple: to put an end to repressions against the opposition, to alter the electoral code, to guarantee freedom of expression, to investigate cases of disappearances and assassinations of oppositional leaders and a journalist. Without fulfillment of these conditions no advances should be made to the Belarusian authorities.

Do European officials remember that opposition leaders including your husband had been forcibly abducted and assassinated?

Europe shouldn’t forget about that. And I am bringing up this point constantly no matter where I speak. How could a ruler be invited to Prague in whose country a former Internal Affairs Minister, a vice-speaker of the parliament, a businessman and a famous journalist had been forcibly abducted and assassinated? What could be discussed with a person when his entourage is suspected of implication in these crimes by the international community?

To you mind, do the European politicians want to meet with the last dictator of the continent in Prague?

Theoretically they could reason in a way that his invitation is possible, as the Eastern partnership is one of the many programs of the European Union, and everybody should be present at this summit. But when I asked participants of the conference about that directly, almost everybody said no. Nobody wants to be a whipping boy.

Irina Krasovskaya met Andrei Sannikov en Carl Bildt (midden)