Strasbourg, 12/12/2006 (Agence Europe) - Alexander Milinkevich, the Head of the Belarus opposition finished his speech to the European Parliament on 12 December (it had just awarded him the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Spirit) with the following words of hope, “Lukachenko, I promise you, will never win any more free elections” as a citizen of a European country, adding, “victory will not be long in coming, and Belarus will soon return to the heart of the European family, as dictators do not have European prospects and sadly finish as tyrants”. Milinkevich was beaten by president Lukachenko in the elections last March and stated that Europe, “cannot be complete without Belarus” and insisted that Sakharov “had always advocated non-violent resistance and I am a follower of this too”. After addressing a few words in French, the prize winner continued in Belarusian and dedicated his prize to all those who are fighting for freedom in his country. He said “there are a lot of us” prepared to sacrifice our personal wellbeing and, if necessary, our lives. He declared that this prize could have gone to other people and mentioned the president of the “last legitimately elected parliament” in Belarus. He deplored the fact that “unfortunately,” these people disappeared and were certainly killed. He added that this is a prize for all those who demonstrated in the streets after the elections last March and said that he was proud of their young people. He pointed out that “it is our children who, after the elections, stayed in the streets and squares when the adults could no longer handle the cold, it is our children who were thrown in prison and once out of prison were thrown out of university”. Mr Milinkevich was indignant that the delegation that accompanied him should have contained the Polish president of Belarus but she had not been allowed to leave the country and that they had confiscated her passport.
The Head of the Belarus opposition welcomed the European Commission's recent proposals on relations with Minsk (EUROPE 92311). Milinkevich explained that these proposals, “are a means of getting Belarus out of its international isolation”. He also said that it they are accepted they would allow for a “genuine rapprochement of our country with Europe”. He admitted, however, that hopes for Lukachenko adhering to them were “practically “nil” and that in the past he had had other offers but they had never received a concrete response. He affirmed that the EU had to expand its aid to the free media, civil society, victims of repression and make this aid more flexible. Milinkevich pointed out that current EU programmes for democratisation “cannot work” in a country like Belarus and that it was high time that a European fund for democracy was created “with real means for enabling it to work in dictatorial countries”. In reply to those who claim that Europe can do very little, Milinkevich explained that “Europe could do a lot for us”. A very practical example of this was the request to not increase the cost of Schengen visas in 2006 to €60 which is prohibitive for Belarus citizens just when the citizens of this country “have a massive need for contact with the outside world”.
Mr Milinkevich insisted that they had always been a European country and briefly retraced the history of Belarus to the 16th century when Belarus “gave Europe the prototype for the first constitution, with the Statute for the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and gave men like Dostoyevsky, Chagall, Apollinaire…It was the first country of Europe to have translated the bible into a mother tongue…And out of the six million Jews exterminated in the holocaust a million of them were from Belarus”. In 1991, Belarus obtained independence “and we were delighted by it, but we didn't immediately realise that freedom and independence does not mean the same thing”, he asserted. The 2006 Sakharov Prize winner averred that the regime was in a difficult situation, Russia was threatening to end its economic support and the power “is getting nervous and accusing the opposition” of being responsible for these difficulties “but we have never called for sanctions against our country as we know they will penalise our people above all”. While fearing a kind of “Anschluss” of Belarus, he accused Lukachenko of worrying about the independence of their country but confusing defending independence with defence of his “own personal power”. In this connection Milinkevich was keen to point out that “for the time being we do not have a common language with Moscow but the Belarus opposition is not against Russia, which is a strategic partner for us. A democratic Belarus will be a credible friend to Russia”. (mg)