The European Union Harasses Belarus

   Partido Comunista de España

   Secretaría de Relaciones Internacionales

   c/Olimpo 35 (28043) Madrid

   Although the European Council's decisions on Belarus were expected, once again the European Union has preferred to walk the path of submission to American demands. After the words of the President of the Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, the statement by Charles Michel, President of the Council, arrived, announcing that the EU does not recognize the results of the Belarusian presidential elections held on August 9th. Charles Michel stated, on behalf of the Council, that the elections were not "fair or free", and talked about "electoral fraud" but he did not show any evidence. He also stated that the EU will work to impose sanctions on members of the Belarusian government to facilitate a "peaceful transition".

   With his hypocrital language, Charles Michel spoke of "redoubling efforts to find a peaceful solution" in Belarus, knowing very well that some member countries of the EU are promoting protests in the country, in an insolent interference, with the pretense of creating a new Maidan, a situation of chaos to overthrow the Lukashenko government. Brussels and the Commission are fully aware that several member countries (Poland, Lithuania, Czech Republic) are working to create a new focus of crisis on the Russian borders, for which they have the support of other European countries and the vigilance and the political and diplomatic support of the United States. It is no coincidence that, while these actions are taking place in Belarus, the NATO military apparatus is conducting maneuvers on the country's borders, deliberately contributing to pressure on Minsk and increasing tension in the area. This interventionist policy, to which the European Union always lends its support, has nothing to do with the defense of human rights, and bears also the shame of being just a subsidiary of Washington's decisions.

   The plan to harass Belarus has been accompanied by the fomenting of violent protests, the spreading of false information about alleged strikes, the sponsorship of assemblies outside Belarusian factories to simulate mass workers' protests, the unanimous support of the conservative media to an hypothetical protest of the great majority of the population, while the demonstrations in support of the Minsk government are silenced. The plan also includes a political opposition that has a neoliberal program to promote privatizations, ending public companies, withdrawing Belarus from the State of the Union that unites it with Russia, leaving the Eurasian Union and the Customs Union, to rely on the supply of liquefied gas from the United States abandoning the Russian gas; implement an aggressive “de-communistization” plan similar to those approved by the far-right governments of Poland and Ukraine; and, finally, to make Belarus to join NATO: a complete program that seems to have been written in Washington, being the one also defended by the European Union.

   The police brutality that, on this occasion, the leaders of the European Union have seen in Belarus, was not perceived in the bloody repression to the yellow jacket in France' demonstrations, which caused eleven deaths, more than four thousand injured and thirteen thousand detained. They have not seen police brutality in the action of the Turkish police with the refugees and much less notice it in the activity of the Libyan coast guard (an accomplice, also, of the slave markets) which is financed by Brussels.

   The European Union that now contributes to the harassment of Belarus government is the same one that financed and supported the coup plotters in Ukraine in 2014; It is the one that sponsored Juan Guaidó to overthrow the government of Venezuela; It is the one that has recognized the putchist of Bolivia who deposed President Evo Morales; and it is the one that now wants to cover itself with democratic virtue when, in fact, it follows the North American interventionist script, as Mike Pompeo announced in Prague on August 12, demanding that the European Union apply sanctions to Belarus. Sanctions as punishment, accepted and announced by Charles Michel, which in no way will contribute to creating a peaceful, harmonious and collaborative climate in Eastern Europe.

   The Communist Party of Spain demands the government of our country to adopt its own decision, detached from any interventionist measure adopted by Brussels or Washington, and calls on workers, citizens, and democratic organizations to express their rejection of this new interventionist adventure, this time against Belarus. This only increases the long list of countries attacked by the imperial ambition of the United States with the assistance of EU countries, because, prisoner of Washington's imperial lead, the European Union has once again adopted a position of follow-up and submission to the USA, taking a position that brings our foreign policy to irrelevance and shame.