On Monday 28 February the spokesperson of the European External Action Service denounced the constitutional referendum held the day before in Belarus “in a context of widespread human rights violations and brutal repression against all segments of society”.
The spokesperson highlighted that the conditions in the country - more than 1,000 political prisoners, no space for real public debate, widespread disinformation and many Belarusians forced into exile - were not those of a democratic constitutional review process. “We witnessed massive fraud in the last presidential elections and nothing points to an improvement in the electoral system”, he added.
In addition, the spokesperson stressed that the interim report of the Council of Europe’s Venice Commission indicated that the proposed changes to the constitution gave ‘President’ Alexander Lukashenko additional tools to further consolidate his power.
According to the president of the electoral commission, 65% of the voters were in favour of the amendments to the constitution and 10% against. The turnout was 78.63%.
The spokesperson also expressed concern about the deletion of the reference in Article 18 to Belarus’ non-nuclear status, adding that the EU would sanction “those in Belarus who collaborate with Russian military aggression against Ukraine”. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)