Valeriya Novodvorskaya: “One shouldn’t encourage tyrants and twiddle with human rights”

Well-known Russians have commented on the decision of the EU to extend moratorium on sanctions against the Belarusian regime.

The assessment of the event was made on air of “Ekho Moskvy” radio station.

Valeriya Novodvorskaya, the chairwoman of the "Democratic Union" party stated:

“Tyrants shouldn’t be encouraged, such things as human rights shouldn’t be played with. Western states seem to have forgotten how their ambassadors had been thrown away by Lukashenka. And they have forgotten about those who had been buried by Lukashenka, about the disappeared, or simply executed illegally and secretly; about crackdown on the opposition. They must not forgive that, until he leaves his post”.

“Lukashenka is forced to make steps to meet the European Union, that means liberalization in Belarus is possible. On the other hand, being entangled with this game, one can lose. Lukashenka is cunning, he can make some cosmetic changes to receive a EU visa, to receive some legitimacy and recognition, and not agree for real democratization of the Belarusian social and political life,” the co-chairperson of “Slidarity” oppositional movement Vladimir Milov warned.

“Nothing can destroy Lukashenka’s internal principles to be a dictator, be a willful person. To be a person who feels orgasm from his political ambitions, his political tyranny. And certainly it would be good to hope that he would visit Switzerland or Germany and bring democratic principles from there. But it won’t happen,” the editor-in-chief of “Moskovsky Komsomolets” newspaper Pavel Gusev is convinced.

On November 17 the Council of the European Union adopted a decision to extend visa sanctions against official Minks till October 2010. At the same time these sanctions were frozen till October.

In the adopted resolution Foreign Ministers of the EU call upon the Belarusian authorities “to respect freedom of mass media, opinions, associations, to reform the electoral legislation and impose moratorium on death penalty”. Ministers also express regret over insufficiency of the reforms Belarus implemented over the time given to it.