Belarus faces EU sanctions risk amid election protests

Bloomberg

European Union foreign ministers will hold a special meeting to discuss the unstable situation in Belarus, with some floating renewed sanctions from the bloc.
The EU “lifted sanctions against Belarus because the country had taken steps in the right direction,” German Foreign Minster Heiko Maas said in Moscow.
“But now we in the European Union need to discuss very seriously whether in the context of the past weeks and above all the last days that still has standing, whether we may need to change this decision and do it very quickly.”
Protesters in Belarus have clashed with riot police for three straight nights in a battle over Alexander Lukashenko’s claim to a landslide victory in the presidential election. The EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, said the elections were “neither free nor fair” and that the effort to quell the demonstrations was “unacceptable.”
More than 1,000 people were detained overnight at protests in 25 towns and cities, the Belarus Interior Ministry said in a statement, adding to the 5,000 already being held. At least 65 protesters and police were injured during clashes, including one person who was the wounded when officers fired shots in the city of Brest, it said.
Lithuanian Foreign Minister Linas Linkevicius said he would propose bloc-wide sanctions against Belarus, and would go ahead with national measures if those efforts failed. Sanctions on an EU level require unanimity among the 27 member states, making their imposition extremely difficult.

Election Challenges
Lithuania is now sheltering the main opposition candidate, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, a 37-year-old former teacher, who fled Belarus after being detained for hours when she went to submit a formal challenge to the results to the Central Election Commission.
Two other election candidates submitted calls to the commission to invalidate the results, and a third is preparing a complaint, the Tass news service reported on Wednesday. That leaves Lukashenko, who was declared to have 80% of the votes, as the only one of the five people on the ballot to accept the outcome.
The US and EU have imposed and removed sanctions against Lukashenko who sought to crush public dissent during elections since coming to power 26 years ago. The former Soviet collective farm boss started to make overtures to the US and EU last year as the Kremlin increased pressure on him to integrate with Russia.
Borrell added that without progress on human rights and the rule of law, Belarus’s relationship with Brussels could only get worse. An in-depth review of the situation may include “taking measures against those responsible for the observed violence, unjustified arrests, and falsification of election results,” Borrell said in a statement.
The meeting of EU foreign ministers will also cover topics including Lebanon and Turkey, Borrell said in a Twitter post.